Ann Wolff Foundation

DROTT E N
D RO T TEN an Old Norse name for ruler or God, was built in the 13th century
for the Holy Trinity, St.Trinitatis. Echoing the church of St.Clemens, some
parts look like S:ta Maria (St. Mary), the actual Dome church. It was abandoned
during the Reformation in the 16th century as the citizens could not keep it
in repair. The sanctuary in the church of Drotten is decorated with tooth
ornaments and zigzag patterns that do not exist in other churches on the island.
In 1525, the final blow came. The merchants of Visby were in a feud with
Lübeck. The Lübeckers burned down all Visby’s churches except the cathedral
St. Mary. The ruins have been preserved to this day, adding a sense of gravity
to the modern city.
AW F the Ann Wolff Foundation, is a non-profit foundation with a mission to
collect and maintain the art of Ann Wolff and to cooperate with other artists
on international projects and programs. Since the organization`s founding
in Berlin 2008, AWF has enabled artists to work with glass by giving an art
prize every second year.
To implement goals we are grateful for any support.
Don’t hesitate to contact us at [email protected]
AWF is an all-volunteer-organization. AWF’s total overhead is covered by our
Board, so your gifts go directly to our programs. Thank you for your donations.
DROTTEN INTERNATIONAL ART PROJECT started 2014. AWF will organize
fine art exhibitions for the next five summers. With the immense challenge
and inspiration from this ruin, the exhibitions will create a dialog between
past and present.
What came first? 2010
Iron and gold on epoxy
© Magdalena Jetelova
Rowenta, 1991
Silver gelatin print
© Tuija Lindström
M AGDA LENA JE TE LO VA creates a real place in the dissolved boundaries of
fabrication, impermanence and disappearance. Visitors lose themselves in
the dissolved bounderies of perception. Jetelova is interested in open formats and
chronic conditions of tension. For the purpose of self discovery the viewer will
experience spatial shifts and extensions of meaning on different levels. Magdalena
Jetelova was born 1946 in Semily, Czechoslovakia. She works and lives in Munich,
Düsseldorf, and Prague.
TUIJA LINDSTR ÖM is an ardent feminist and was Sweden’s first female professor in
photography, 1992-2002. Lindström’s work is powerful and meditative at the same time,
her stories contain both sensual dreams as well as colorful landscapes and experimental
fractals. Lindström’s artistic break-through was in the beginning of the 1990s with the
series The Girls at Bull’s Pond – a suite both sensual and frightening.
The women are contrasted dramatically by images of flat-irons – a very surprising and
refined clash of styles. Tuija Lindström was born in 1950 in Kotka, Finland. She works
and lives in Stockholm.
A NDREAS FOR SB E RG is an architect known through his project Studio Furillen.
The building tries to preserve both the strong feeling and character to be found
on Furillen and at the same time create something completely new.
To be both closed and open, space is hidden behind enormous corten steel sheets,
these can open up for light and nature. An architecture simple yet complex, distinct,
strong character and discreet, unobtrusive. Andreas Forsberg was born in 1975 in
Köping, Sweden. He lives and works in Visby and Stockholm.
I N T E RNAT IONA LA RT P R O JE CT
15/6 - 15/9
MA RIA MIE SE NBE RG ER’s work often revolves around themes such as the sense
of belonging and the relationship between memory and identity, this whether she is
working with photography or sculpture. The sculptures she has chosen to set free
and invade the St. Drotten ruin are cast in stainless steel, the surface of the bodies
covered in a stylized pattern based on an illustration of the optical nerve.
Tending to break free, to move around, the sculptures catch the frozen moment of
incidental, still movements, of play and rest, of being in one place but always on the
move in search of a profound understanding of life and their own selves.
Maria Miesenberger, born in 1965, lives and works in Stockholm.
ANN WO LFF exhibits heads – Imprints and Impression –, focusing on masks that we
build, wear, keep or remove. The materials she works with are glass, concrete and
aluminium. It would seem to indicate that for Ann Wolff, masks are persona-forms and
immaterial illusions of the creative imagination, and that through these masks she
creates an intimate sense of herself as regards greater self-awareness. They are the
basis upon which she constructs different phases and understanding of herself and
others – forms of personal identity in the larger reality of human otherness. Ann Wolff
was born 1937 in Lübeck, Germany. She lives and works on Gotland.
www.annwolff-foundation.com
DROTTEN, cover photo Ann Wolff, folder design Amanda Wärff, printed by TMG Sthlm 2014
Studio Furillen, 2011
© Andreas Forsberg
photo Åke E:son Lindman
Standing Motion (landing),
2014 Stainless steel
© Maria Miesenberger
photo Marcus Hansen
Head and Head, 2013
Concrete and glass
© Ann Wolff
photo Thomas Wågström