Karin Dreijer; Fever Ray formerly The Knife

Last April I participated in the Supermarket Artfair in Stockholm. In advance of the Artfair I asked Andreas Ribbung, one of the organizers, to propose someone for a ‘close encounter’ with my work. He suggested to present one of my works to pop singer Karin Dreijer. Subsequently, I started acting like a real fan and selected my painting ‘I love you’ and sent it to Andreas in Stockholm by post. In March Karin Dreijer was on tour with her band Fever Ray and held a concert in Paradiso in Amsterdam. Attending her concert was a nice opportunity for me to see Fever Ray performing live. Five power woman gave a very energetic performance. A glowing article about her in The Gaurdian shows that she is not only interesting because of her music. In the meantime Andreas was unable to get in touch with Karin or someone close to her. As an alternative he decided to show my work in a side room of his artist’s run initiative; Candyland, a small exhibition room in Stockholm. He was one of the founders in 2004.
During the opening of the SupermarketArtfair I had a successful presentation about my ‘Close Encounters’ project. Visitors responded very enthusiastically.
On Sunday, my last day in Stockholm, I went to Candyland to collect my painting; ‘I love you’. Its presentation was quite nice, next to the canns Campbell’s soup, famous thanks to Warhol. I also met artist Amanda Ziemele, it was the last day of her exhibition; ‘Being like a sponge’.
Although I didn’t meet Karin Dreijer in person it’s nice to notice that a ‘close encounter’ cannot actually fail, it was again a great experience.