The Art of Karl Momen: A Synthesis of Universal Proportions
PRESS RELEASE
The Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm will open a retrospective exhibition paintings and sculptures by one of Sweden’s most controversial adopted sons – Karl Momen, on 26 August, 2009. Once referred to by respected art critic Stig Johannsson as “a vagabond in the art world” the 75 year old Momen has distinguished himself over his prolific 40 year career as an international artist of repute with a resilient and idiosyncratic vision.
This is the first time that such a comprehensive body of Momen’s works has been shown in one venue. The exhibition includes works on loan from public and private collections as far afield as the Nordic Heritage Museum in the United States, to private collections in Europe and the Middle East. Momen has exhibited widely in museums and galleries around the world. He was three times selected to be shown at the Biennale de Sculpture de Monte Carlo.
Born on the Russian Iranian border to a designer and producer of fine Persian rugs, Momen was exposed at an early age to the bold colors and decorative designs of his father’s craft. His abiding interest in abstraction can also be traced to his early exposure to the works of the Russian Constructivists. Momen received his training at the Stuttgart Art Academy where he worked with Max Ernst and served an internship with Le Corbusier before relocating to Sweden, becoming a citizen in the early 1960s.
Karl Momen’s work is rooted in the visual language of formalism, the aesthetic movement that dominated modernism after World War II. The notion of “significant form”, first advocated by British philosopher Clive Bell, finds new meaning in Momen’s sparse but scrupulously conceived compositions that balance simple geometric shapes within elegant figure-ground relationships. Momen’s vocabulary of circles, hemispheres, straight lines, and triangles reflect his early vocation as an architect. His deceptively simple compositions are enlivened by subtle gradations of color, vibrant hues, and palpable textures that serve as a counterpoint to their architectonic rigor.
His refined architectural sensibility charges his sculptural work with a keen sense of the corporeal, often resulting in monolithic forms of heroic proportions. The largest of his works is the Tree of Utah (1985) which has become a permanent feature in the Utah landscape, rising over 27 meters feet above the barren Bonneville Salt Flats. This ambitious work has joined other works such as Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake, and Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels in the Utah desert as a significant example of land art with an intrinsic environmental dimension.
The exhibition will be on view until 4 October, 2009.