Carl Adam Cronstedt

Stockholm, Sweden

About Carl Adam Cronstedt

Carl Adam Cronstedt was short listed for the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition last year and has also been seen on Art Basel. He is currently based in Stockholm but seldom stays in one place for long. His art, characterized by black humor and ironic attacks on our culture is well known in Stockholm. ----- I want to create an interface which throws the viewer into a world filled with intense characters. I want to portray ambivalent personalities and expose subtle emotions and underlying doubt. Those nano-seconds when a person reveals his or hers cultivated denial and often veiled despair. This game appears most clearly in the male world - in the artificial confidence of men in a group. Or put differently - the study of social phenomena from a closed and male world. After a short time of working in accounting for Sir Robert McAlpine and the management trainee programme at Modern Times Group I felt broody. Leaving the office each day feeling unsatisfied, I had a strong urge to return to the academic world. I left my position and enrolled to study at London School of Economics. After I had finished a Masters Degree in Philosophy and History of Science I began to draw more intensely. To study philosophy in depth is both difficult and time consuming. As a form of expression it allows you to immediately provoke and play around with everything from questions about epistemology to meaning/reality and other types of metaphysical issues. My favourite subject and main inspiration is the Philosophy of Social Science with questions surrounding rationality, relativism and identity. I'm not aiming at glamorising the disgusting and ugly but to bring out the resigned humour and irony which makes existence bearable. The generation I belong to have not inherited much when it comes to meaningful moral values. We have too much freedom and the burden of endless choices is inevitable. Existential questions feel more and more relevant the more you dig in this "freedom". What do you base your choices on and why? I find it important to see meaninglessness as a source of freedom instead of despair. There is no master plan and that eases my mind. Truth is subjective, reality has no key. The first scientific postulate is the objectivity of nature: nature does not have any intention or goal. We may yearn for a "higher answer" - but none exists. My overall intention is to evoke thought, which for me is what both philosophy and art is about.

Education:

2010- ArtistLab
2008 MSc Philosophy and History of Science (London School of Economics)
2003-2005 MSc Accounting (Bond University)
2000-2003 BSc Economics with Computing (University of Surrey)

Exhibitions:

2018 - "An egocentric Pursuit", The Bangsta Flat.
2018 - “Human Rights, Civil Courage and Heroes”, Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Santiago.
2014 - "I am one of the most unpleasant men I know", NineRooms, Stockholm.
2013 - "Human Rights, Civic Courage, and Heroes", Färgfabriken, Stockholm.
2013 - "A Fool's choice" Strandgalleriet, Stockholm.
2013 - "Human Rights, Civic Courage, and Heroes", Villa Grimaldi, Santiago.
2013 - Fashionmarket, Stockholm.
2013 - China Teatern, Stockholm.
2013 - ”Like characters in a play or a novel acting out some artificial plot ”, Hotel Diplomat, Stockholm.
2012 - Konstnärsbaren KB, Stockholm.
2012 - Källhagen, Stockholm.
2011 - Imperiet, Stockholm.
2011 - Censur, Sturebiblioteket, Stockholm.
2010 - Young Art, For a good Cause II, Bukowskis, Stockholm.
2010 - Rosendalsträdgård, Stockholm.
2009 - Young Art, For a good Cause, Bukowskis, Stockholm.