Mamma Andersson – Lyckokatt (2014)

Louisiana print with the work, Lyckokatt (2014), by the Swedish painter, Karin Mamma Andersson (b. 1962), which Louisiana presented in 2021 with the exhibition, Humdrum Days. Mamma Andersson stands as one of the most important painters of her generation and Louisiana presented her for the first time in a large print run in Denmark. 

Lyckokat - The Lucky Cat - here, looks quite welcoming, but can still bring to mind Mamma Andersson's relationship with the color black, which she often also uses on large surfaces in different versions - a warm one, a cold one, a glossy one or a matte one, sometimes aggressively opaque, other times a thin spray that covers a landscape, for example. With black, Andersson consciously creates a depth, a darkness where death can lurk, an aesthetic, in her own words.

Mamma Andersson builds her paintings on the basis of art historical references and found photographs, films and historical clippings - often black and white, which gives her greater freedom in choosing the colors that she tells. It is painting on painting, pictures on pictures, when Andersson's works open up into a universe of suggestive and emotionally charged stories in vast landscapes, interiors and portraits. However, it never becomes a pure copy. The originality lies in a new translation, where Mamma Andersson turns and plays with the images in paint, charcoal, chalk - so that a new story emerges.

Read more about the exhibition here.