Application to the Andelsgaarde and Aalborg University Residency of Ground Connections
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My name is Sebastian Ramn and I am 39 years old. I live on Södermalm in Stockholm with my wife and two children. I have a background in both animation, design and communication and today I run my own art and design practice So-and-sow out of a studio in central Stockholm – working at the intersection of plants, flavours, and the future.
Introduktion
I have worked as an independent designer and artist for 15 years. I move between design and art, between graphic design and painting, but what they all have in common is storytelling and image-making. I have illustrated and animated a children’s TV series about the UN Sustainable Development Goals, designed the branding for an Astrid Lindgren character, co-founded a Top 100 fintech startup, and created an animated short film that has competed in and won awards at several film festivals worldwide. I paint in studio and en plein air and am permanently represented in places such as ABF House and Region Dalarna, as well as in private collections. I photographed the devastation in Haiti for a report on the earthquake and documented a train journey from Stockholm to Siberia with wax crayons.
I strongly believe in multidisciplinary work: cross-craftsmanship and simultaneous activity across several professions and media produce more interesting and stronger works. For several years I have been using the format of an expedition as a process in my design and artistic practice and after meeting Andrea García Portolés and finding common ground in soil, low-tech solutions and explorative processes a future collaboration felt inevitable. Then we heard about the Andelsgaarde and Aalborg University Residency of Ground Connections and simply felt we had to apply.
For nearly 20 years, my career has moved between artistic initiatives, freelance work as a designer, commissioned projects, and running my own studio. Below is a curated and categorised selection of my experience in art and design.
Previous experiences
““Staircase” and “Parkbench”
Installations and paintings for ABF
The installations are painted on MDF using acrylic and vinyl acrylic. Park Bench measures approximately 2.5 × 5 meters in total, and Staircase approximately 3 × 0.7 meters. All concept development, production, and execution were carried out by the artist. Installed in 2020 and 2023, respectively.
Staircase
Observations discovered, collected, and made visible on site by Sebastian Ramn; a series of seven paintings commissioned by and permanently installed in the ABF building in Stockholm..
On two occasions, I was invited to produce visual installations for the ABF building in Stockholm. Both installations are closely connected to the physical building itself, its surrounding environment, and ABF’s history and core values—the belief that knowledge and education provide people with unique perspectives and opportunities. This was of central importance to both ABF and myself in the development of the works: to demonstrate how people’s differing viewpoints give rise to an infinite number of internal narratives. When we change our conditions, we change our worldview.
The installations, “Park Bench” and “Staircase”, function as portrait-like puzzles and implied narratives in which viewers assemble visual fragments and observations themselves, allowing a place to be experienced as something more than a single, fixed moment.
“Staircase” brings together fragments and observations that collectively attempt to portray what it means not only to see, but to holistically experience an unfamiliar place—and to convey that experience to someone else.
Navigate sideways using the arrows to view all images.
Park Bench
Installation consisting of 19 paintings, permanently installed in the ABF House in Stockholm.
The paintings were observed and physically painted on the site they also portray. This adds an additional layer of attachment to the place; that the artist acted as an explorer, carefully observing the location, collecting visual markers and then packaging the fragments to depict not only a snapshot of the place but also its broader context, its ecosystem
"Parkbench" consists of 19 paintings that together function like a puzzle of suggested narratives, inviting the viewer to construct their own internal sequence based on prior knowledge and experience.
Nature Needs Help
Short film, website and initiative.
The project was planned and designed by hand. Animated in 2D, both object-based in After Effects and as cel animation. Concept, design and all production (except for sound) were carried out by the artist himself. Duration: 01:18. Format: Full HD 1920×1080. Produced 2019.
Nature needs help. It needs to be heard, understood and supported. So do the organizations already fighting climate change. But as an individual it is hard to know where to start. Nature needs help was born from an effort to connect volunteer organizations in need of assistance with creators who wanted to help. "Nature needs.help" is an animated film that portrays climate change as nature’s own cry for help; with animals and their environments sending out a distress signal, an SOS. The film calls on the creative industry to answer the call and offer their time and craft to the volunteer organizations that need their help. The art project also included a website where creators and volunteer organizations could sign up.
Nature needs help has been exhibited and shown at several film festivals and exhibitions. It was presented as part of “ITFS Open Air” at Schlossplatz in Stuttgart and as a permanent feature in "To save and preserve", a section of “The International Ecological Animation Festival”, where it also won the “Jury’s Choice” award. In addition, the film has been included in more than 10 film festivals and the website has generated hundreds of submissions.
“42 drawings from a train to Siberia”
Visual expedition, article, drawings and exhibition. Carried out in 2019.
The film participated in film festivals around the world and one particular invitation I accepted was to Khanty-Mansiysk in Siberia. I do not fly for climate reasons, but I decided to travel there by train and treat the whole journey as a visual expedition. I prepared, packed and built, among other things, a low-tech portable sketch and paint box that was compact and sturdy enough to travel with. The trip there took four days. I stayed for four days and then traveled home over the same span. I collected stories, portraits, quotes, took notes, sketched and painted. It turned out to be among the most rewarding things I have done. I eventually gathered the work into an article, “42 drawings from a train to Siberia,” and assembled an exhibition of all the material I collected and produced during the journey.
The journey resulted in a wealth of visual notes of surroundings, places and people, but what made the depictions even richer was the lens of being an explorer in a foreign place. The portraits also turned inward, toward the thoughts and ideas that arose in response to the environment.
Read the article here.
OSLOSLO
Visual identity, cover art, illustration
Started in 2023 and ongoing.
Webpage
Potatis
I am currently also working with designing a bistro in Oslo, involving most notably, portraying a new ingredient each month that their entire menu is then built around. The portraits give visitors a broader picture of the process the ingredient goes through before it is served; that it is interpreted in people's minds and handled by their hands. An ingredient does not exist in only one form; it has lived a life, existed longer than humans, inhabited a place, been refined, described and sung about. In the same way as in the previously mentioned projects, I want to try to create more holistic depictions which result in portraits that are richer than mere representations.
Tomat
Fänkål
Jordärtskocka
Landscape painting
Landscape paintings from various plein-air expeditions in archipelago environments between 2019–2023
“A Landscape painting is not necessarily a representation of a landscape, but rather something that, in being constructed out of pieces of representation, or possibly just echoes of former representations, kindles an experience of its own — one that, as those fragments of resemblance suggest, is somehow like an experience of nature.”
/Barry Schwabsky
“Haiti: Den andra katastrofen”
Fotoreportage
Reportaget publicerades 2011 i DI Weekend och producerades av Mikael Delin, nu på Dagens Nyheter.
Bilderna är ett begränsat urval från reportaget.
In 2011 I went to Haiti with journalist Mikael Delin as his photographer to document Port-au-Prince one year after the devastating earthquake that had struck the island and the city. It was an incredibly emotional experience, horrific and rewarding, and also capricious. Every day was unpredictable and we had to completely adapt to the chaos that prevailed; sometimes we had a translator, some parts of the city were flooded, others too dangerous.
With this project I also draw a parallel to the format of an expedition which I today see as such a central part of my methodology. We arrived at the site with open minds and the few tools we had. Language, contacts, and equipment were limited. We had to be attentive and responsive to the surroundings, and then the stories began to emerge.
The above examples are a narrow selection of projects and experiences I considered especially relevant to the application. For a broader range of work, please see ramn.gallery for paintings and sebastianramn.com for design and animation-related projects. If you have any questions or would like to see anything further, please don't hesitate to get in touch.
Methodology
For several years now, I have used the idea—or format—of the ‘expedition’ as a central component of my image-making practice and artistic identity. Carrying out the necessary preparations, planning for scenarios, and then setting out, limited to the tools brought along, in order to capture, collect, and portray everything unexpected that emerges. This approach I’ve found is just as relevant within plein air painting and filmmaking as it is in writing and garden design.
I strive to employ almost scientific methods for gathering impressions, samples, and notes, and then use this material to portray a place, person or action for someone else—thereby conveying something more than the snapshot of a single moment, such as a photograph. It is an attempt to depict the sum of a place: its scents and sounds, the time that has passed, the thoughts that have arisen, everything that lives and dies there—both vast ecosystems and microscopic worlds. I am interested in creating images and experiences of how everything is interconnected. To try and distill that wholeness into something that speaks to the senses. By genuinely attempting to experience and understand the totality of a place, we begin to understand more about ourselves, others, and how everything fits together. As explorers, we can gather these tactile impressions and return with yet another piece of the puzzle—contributing to greater understanding and making it possible to convey this to others.
Thank you
Contact
me@sebastianramn.com / 0702191007