Michael Johansson: Real Life Tetris, Public Art & Forgetting to Eat

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Michael Johansson is a Swedish installation artist based in Malmö, known for precisely assembled sculptures and installations made from ready-made objects that he describes as ‘real life Tetris’. His work has been shown across Europe, Asia and beyond, and ranges from ephemeral site-specific installations to large-scale permanent public commissions cast in bronze.

What we cover:

• The art school realisation: being technically skilled at drawing is not the same as knowing what kind of art you want to make

• Sourcing from flea markets and secondhand stores

• Institutional installations made entirely from objects borrowed from a museum's own back rooms and storage

• Residencies for installation artists and the newer model he thinks would work much better

• The Taiwan passport disaster: two days to install a large site-specific work and why it turned out almost too good to be true

• Time as the greatest challenge: procrastinating until the last possible moment and forgetting to eat

• Moving a whole city: why an entire Swedish town is being relocated and how his new project is linked

09:00 Growing Up and Early Making

10:42 Finding Artistic Direction