Hanna Sjöstrand was born in 1978 in Karlskoga and lives in Oslo. She was educated at Lund University, 2014; Malmö Art Academy, (MFA), 2004–2009; Valand Academy of Art and Design, Gothenburg, 2004 – 2005; Gerlesborgsskolan, Bohuslän 2000 – 2002; Nyckelviksskolan, Lidingö, 1998 – 1999. She has exhibited in Sweden and internationally since 2007 and is represented at Malmö konstmuseum, The Aguéli Museum, Sala;
Public Art Agency Sweden; The Norwegian School of Sport Sciences; Region Stockholm and Region Skåne.

Do not disturb my circles

Unlike Archimedes, who did not want to be disturbed when he was thinking, Hanna Sjöstrand welcomes disruptions and shifts to habitual views and perspectives. The heading refers to what were allegedly the last words uttered by Archimedes when he pointed to the geometric figures he had drawn in the sand, before a Roman soldier killed him in 212 BCE. The quote was attributed to the scientist some 300 years after his death by the Greek historian Plutarch. In reality, it is not clear how Archimedes’s life ended, but the words have lived on to our days.

Hanna Sjöstrand’s exhibition Taverna geometrica presents a series of conceptual paintings and reliefs depicting the structure and imagery of football, where the geometric figures of Archimedes, and especially his truncated icosahedrons, are a key component. Her starting point was the first paragraph of Laws of the Game, the common rules adopted at a meeting of English football clubs in October 1863. The geometric forms of the field, and even the inherent nature of the ball itself, are scrutinised and dissected.

Sjöstrand’s practice is fundamentally both sensory and physical, and conceptual by nature, regardless of whether she engages in painting, performance art, film or installation. In serial paintings, she systematically and analytically explores the language of painting and its different roles, where human perception, shifts in perspective and how we interact with our surroundings are key variables in her artistic process, driven by a curious mind.

Several of her new works relate to the body and physicality, while harbouring an understanding of Eastern philosophy. She herself practices the martial art of Yin-style Baguazhang, a variety of Kung Fu deeply rooted in Chinese history and regarded by some as a physical embodiment of I Ching, the Book of Changes. This is the oldest work of classical Chinese literature and contains many of the central ideas and concepts of Chinese philosophy.

Visually, her works are often based on something highly concrete, and the images can strangely appear both completely figurative and yet abstract. For the series Bruises from 2012, twelve artist colleagues who had been seminal to her own practice at various times were asked to bruise her by hitting her somewhere on her body. The resulting blemishes were photographed and then painted in a format corresponding to her body length. Without knowing their origin, you might perceive these paintings as alluring portrayals of celestial phenomena, but as soon as we become aware of their background, a sensation of pain is introduced.

In Sjöstrand’s exhibition, as in the football field, the circle holds a key position. The circle is one of our oldest symbols and has since time immemorial represented central phenomena in many cultures, such as the sun, unity and infinity. One example of this is the serpent or dragon eating its tail, Ouroboros, originating in ancient Egypt and Greece, which has been interpreted as a symbol representing that all is one, in an eternal cycle of destruction and regeneration. The familiar concept of Yin and Yang in Chinese philosophy is also illustrated with a circle whose content reflects complementary yet opposite forces. These combine to form a dynamic system, where the whole is greater than its parts, while the parts are essential to the unity of the whole, as in heaven and earth, or male and female.

Circular or spherical shapes also occur frequently throughout the history of art and sports. Rubber balls that are more than 3,000 years old have been found in Mexico, and more than 1,300 playing fields have been excavated in Central America. The Maya people, for instance, had a ritual ball game, Pok-a-tok, where the players used their hips, elbows or knees to make a rubber ball weighing several kilos hit the opposite team’s wall or pass through a vertical stone hoop at either end of the rectangular playing field. Ball games are documented in ancient Greece, and the original Olympic games were held to honour the gods at Olympia, a holy place and the centre for the worship of Zeus. In China, we find references to Tsu Chu being played as far back as the 5th century BCE, a game where a leather ball filled with feathers was kicked through an opening in a net stretched between two bamboo rods. In our days, the emblem of the modern Olympic Games is five rings, representing the five continents.

This exhibition presents a series of paintings titled Green on White, originating in Sjöstrand’s fascination for classical Greco-Roman ideals of beauty, which are still so thoroughly ingrained in football, even after they have long been the subject of criticism in art. The “gods” are still alive and well on the football pitch, while the structure, strategy and beauty of the game continues to be the subject of endless analysis and idolatry. In the world of art, inversely, the formerly-adulated genius has since long been scrutinised and deconstructed, and art has been somewhat demystified.

The field has also captured her interest on a purely visual level. In her paintings, she maps the structure of the football pitch and raises questions about what it entails and what is created there thanks to its existence. In the same way that a square represents stability, order and structure, the rectangular playing field stands for something solid, while the circular markings and the ball itself embody something more celestial. The geometric shapes have been separated and each appear in splendid isolation on their own canvas.

Four paintings showing either half of the central circle and the circular markings outside the penalty zones are installed at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo. Our exhibition features four new works, reliefs titled Plain White, which explore these shapes. Here, the geometric fields have literally gained a further dimension, as the reliefs that form the semicircles in the two pairs are either negative or positive. The white-painted plaster reliefs serve both as an extension of the project and a memory or indication of the shapes that have left the series.

The ball itself, on which the whole game is based, is also present in the exhibition, of course, and here we have reason to return to the truncated icosahedron, a geometric element whose name is rarely used nowadays, although the shape itself is utterly familiar. In geometry, this is a three-dimensional convex volume consisting of thirty-two surfaces divided into twelve regular pentagons and twenty regular hexagons. In sports, the same specification, with black pentagons and white hexagons, simply defines the components of a football, as Sjöstrand meticulously and distinctly shows in the painting Exposed Matchball.

Her own experience from football and other ball games such as handball and basketball gives Hanna Sjöstrand a personal link to the project. As an artist, she strives to explore complexity – an approach that is highly congenial with the nature of football. Football is both a sport and entertainment, but also a social phenomenon. Sports are often lauded for their unifying power that promotes friendship and team spirit, but they can also fuel a strong sense of us and them and bring out the baser qualities in people. In terms of sociology of religion, the arena can be defined as a sacred place, where heroes are worshipped and spectators witness something greater than man. The arena site, the game, the teams and the community evoke ecstatic feelings in the individual, making it a veritable religious activity, albeit not in the traditional sense.

In Hanna Sjöstrand’s Taverna geometrica, every guest has the opportunity to experience the football pitch from a new angle, to explore its minutest geometrical components, and allow their thoughts to freely contemplate the structure and implications of the game. Welcome onto the field, and let your circles be disturbed.

Ulrika Levén, curator