Fort Knox Installation

MADEBYUS involves the two of us: Therese Ameln Merner (Born in Sweden 27 sep 1976, raised in Switzerland) and Oscar Merner (Born and raised in Sweden 13 nov 1977) We now live and work in Stockholm. We have been working together longer than we´ve been married to each other. We are artists in our own right but somehow the more we worked on our own projects, the more we got involved in each other’s. We then decided to try and merge our two ways of expression. The beginning was hard but the more we learned to trust each other’s artistic contribution, the more interesting and rewarding were the outcomes. We have different schoolings in art and creativity. Therese has worked in graphic design and abstract painting. Oscar has worked on illustrations and figurative art. We believe that our differences complete each other in interesting ways. We have during the years tried a lot of different techniques and methods, materials and styles and we are still exploring and curious to experiment. We often have a lot of bright colors, a lot of layers of paint or paper. We work with different materials, especially used, ”recycled” pieces and find the mix both beautiful and interesting. We’re looking for beauty in everything and it’s not hard to find. The past years we’ve been working alot with books, we believe that books affect all our senses. The beauty of the pages as well as the frames and the shapes of letters are something we find fascinating and great to experiment with, and work with as a base. Our artistic influences and inspiration is drawn from Joan Miro, Cy Twombly, Henri Matisse, Jasper Johns, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jean Tinguely, Keith Haring, Robert Rauschenberg.