Making Concrete and Conceivable —Sophie Tottie & Johan Widén at Västerås Konstmuseum
From September 20, 2025, Västerås Konstmuseum presents the exhibition Making Concrete and Conceivable (Göra fattbart och förnimbart), with Swedish artists Sophie Tottie and Johan Widén. They last exhibited together in1991–92, when they made the exhibition ПЕТЕРБУРГ МОСКВА in Leningrad and Moscow, during drastically changing times when the Soviet Union dissolved. This new show brings their practices into dialogue during the uncertain times of today, but now in a former industrial space, where the works discuss fundamental questions around existential, political, and historical issues – issues which often are tied to specific places and contexts. Presentation of the exhibition here.
On the left : Stratigraf(er) / planet(er), 2018-2025, oil, colored pencil and soil on pre-glued cotton canvas, stretched frame 113 x 216 cm (each). On the right: “To the other side I–V”, 2025, Johan Widén installation at Västerås konstmuseum. View of installation from the exhibition Making Concrete and Conceivable. Photo /Photo: Sophie Tottie
Two Artists, One Dialogue
Johan Widén and Sophie Tottie in Malmö 1988. Photo: Jan Svenungsson
Tottie and Widén met at the Art Academy (Konsthögskolan) in Stockholm in the late 1980s. Their early collaborative exhibition crossed national borders and broke political narratives apart – just as the Soviet Union was renamed Russia. Their exhibition, which featured both shipped and site specifically made works and interventions, is discussed in an interview film made now as a backdrop to the exhibition in Västerås. Along with the installation of the current show, the film shows photos from the 1990s of gouache paintings on windows, asphalt sculptures made from the broken streets and found media, such as a bulk of Soviet newspapers, used as wallpaper to alter apartments into exhibition spaces. Now, thirty years later, their works are brought into dialogue in a radically different context — the former industrial halls of ASEA’s Mimerverkstaden, re-made as museum gallery space at Västerås konstmuseum. (The industry incidentally, not only electrified Sweden during the early 1900 but also large cities like London and St Petersburg.)
Kticic Voyager (II) / Re-Sited, 1999 - 2025. Acrylic on enameled aluminum, 90 x 100 cm (uncut sheet/24 pcs), variable dimensions installed. View of installation from the exhibition Making Concrete and Conceivable, Västerås konstmuseum, with works by Sophie Tottie. Photo: Sophie Tottie
Place, Layers, Time
The exhibition unfolds in two linked galleries, where Tottie and Widén explore topics that can be described with words like movement, stratification, place — and in particular time. Tottie’s painting installations Kticic Voyager (Re-Sited) II & III, 1999-2025, re-works circular forms by way of architectural sites and sci-fi imagery — cutting and fragmenting the surfaces by rearranging and replacing painted enameled metal plates in a way that affects both time and space. Her newly finished works Stratigraf(er) / Stratigraph(s) draws on geological layering, and include materials like linen, iron-oxide ink, earth pigments, mosquito nets which also associate with weather and the gaze. Tottie's works are put in dialogue with Widén’s major new work Till andra sidan (To the Other Side, 2025), a suite of five diptychs, which frame the human body in gesture and thresholds — crossing from one state of being into another. Other works in dialogue are his Etruscan Places, eleven smaller paintings referring to collapsing historical Etruscan burial places and the work Le Pleiadi series which through drawings, photographs and paintings alludes to the star constellation that humans have used to navigate since ancient times.
Kticic Voyager (III) / Re-Sited, 1999 - 2025. acrylic on enameled aluminum, 300 x 900 cm + iron stand. View of installation from the exhibition with works by Sophie Tottie, left, and Johan Widén, right. Photo: Sophie Tottie
An Exhibition in Uncertain Times
Departing from painting and drawing the exhibition Making Concrete and Conceivable (Göra fattbart och förnimbart) renews their previous dialogue that took place when the Cold War ended and the first Gulf war broke out. The works — some started decades ago —oscillate between changing contexts which give the works new relevance. The works of Tottie and Widén invite the viewer to consider how images, forms and materials carry time, history and political resonance.
In an era when the past seems ever-present and the future uncertain – the show circles around new possibilities: how to make the invisible visible– and how to imagine and reimagine.
Making Concrete and Conceivable (Göra fattbart och förnimbart) — Sophie Tottie & Johan Widén,
Västerås Konstmuseum, September 20, 2025 – January 11, 2026.
Finnissage with Sophie Tottie & Johan Widén January 11, 2026