Johan F. Karlsson,
Sigrid Holmwood,
Christofer Degrér,
Alexander Höglund,
Sara Andreasson

Leave Society
27/2–29/3 2026

Curator: Richard Krantz



"Lasse in the mountain":

It was a sunny day sometime in the early 2000s, and my classmates and I were, as usual, heading out on a school excursion to Lasse’s Cave. Or “Lasse in the Mountain,” as it is also known. In reality, it is the ruins of a small stone cottage built and inhabited by a man named Lars Eriksson and his wife Inga in the 19th century. It lies at the edge of the rural town where I grew up, at the point where the community dissolves into wild forest and nature reserve. Lars Eriksson was driven by a longing for freedom and a life without counts and barons; he said fuck you to society and retreated into the woods. He certainly would not live in some miserable poorhouse. He left the village and its community behind. Unwelcome visitors were driven away with threats of violence. There he lived with Inga for nearly thirty years. It must have been damp and miserable. Eventually, the landowners in the area learned that it was best to leave Lasse in the Mountain alone.

We got on our bicycles and rode off. My own bike was broken, so I had borrowed one from a teacher. A few hundred meters from Lasse’s Cave, we had to cross a narrow wooden bridge. I was not entirely used to the bicycle; the front wheel caught in a gap in one of the planks, and I flew over the handlebars, over the bridge railing, and landed in a slurry of mud below. I split my lip but was otherwise unharmed, though covered in sludge from head to toe. Some classmates laughed, others helped me up. The bicycle had been bent in the crash. It was unanimously decided that I could not continue the excursion and would have to be transported home. A teacher—not the one I had borrowed the bike from—would drive me. He laid garbage bags across the car seat, and I was told to remove all my clothes except my underwear before sitting down.

We drove the distance to my home in silence, and the teacher dropped me off somewhat perfunctorily at the bus station about 500 meters away. I then walked the rest of the way home in my underwear, carrying the muddy bundle of clothes in my arms.

Like Lasse, I had, albeit unintentionally, left my group. I had been excluded from the collective. Even though it was not self-chosen, there was something peaceful about it. I did not have to spend the day with classmates I did not particularly care for (except Lars), and instead I could eat candy and watch television until my mother came home from work. I could imagine the others wandering around in the nature reserve—sweaty, miserable, and eating their unpleasant packed lunches.

There is much that is problematic about wanting to leave society. A distrust of the collective is, in many ways, a bleak impulse. It also brushes up against a rejection of science and paves the way for something that resembles critical thinking but is not: conspiracy theories of all kinds, antivaccination movements, and a wellness industry that generates far greater revenue than “big pharma.” Self-appointed gurus who “do their own research,” and a prepper mentality that evokes local warlords and a latent longing for collapse.

But there is also something compelling, even beautiful, in not wanting to participate. Most of us have, at some point, left a party without saying goodbye—what a feeling that is. As an artist, it is professionally important to remain active: socially, on social media, and in accepting opportunities. Will they invite me to another exhibition if I decline this one? Simply not feeling like participating can have devastating consequences.

In the group exhibition Leave Society, we encounter a number of artworks that engage, in different ways, with the idea of leaving. They do not always depict a grand departure from society, but each approaches the phenomenon on some level, directly or through association. The works evoke questions of farewell, arrival elsewhere, traces left behind, isolation, and the strange condition of being present even after one has gone.

Johan F. Karlsson’s video work "Farewell Piece (Ascending Peaks Evoke Fading Thoughts)" (2024) documents a performance—or happening—realized during an artist residency. The artist is seen methodically and deliberately saying goodbye to his fellow residents before slowly disappearing over the mountains on the horizon. The group remains behind, watching his gradual disappearance. Is there another group on the other side, watching him arrive? When one disappears from one place, one inevitably appears in another.

The dynamics of disappearance, appearance, and disappearance again are also explored in Christofer Degrér’s sculptural work. Inside a large glass sphere, a cloud can be glimpsed behind what appears to be sandy sludge or fog, but is in fact a carefully calibrated mixture of chemical components slowly sedimenting at the bottom of the sphere. Chance determines what you encounter as a visitor. You may see nothing at all; you may glimpse the cloud faintly emerging; or it may be fully visible. It takes a long time for the cloud to become completely clear, making the timing and duration of your encounter decisive. Spending a day watching clouds might itself be considered a protest against the contemporary performance-driven society, even though it is something humans have done throughout history.

Sara Andreasson’s wall-based sculptures In "Addition to Absence and Other Sciences" (2024) are based on patterns found in Dutch window shutters—the wooden shutters mounted on the exterior of houses, used to block out light and heat when needed, and to protect from outside view. The “handles” are made from children’s inlay puzzles, while the shutters themselves are constructed from floorboards. In the Netherlands, it is common to bring floorboards along when moving from one home to another. In this way, Andreasson’s works function as puzzles in themselves, assembled from discarded materials to become something else—objects that negotiate the relationship between interior and exterior, isolation and welcome.

Sigrid Holmwood’s paintings, "Alt-Right Coprolite" (2024), are scattered throughout the exhibition. They depict fossilized Viking excrement—turds that appear to fall somewhere around type 2–3 on the Bristol stool scale. Very hard, and the result of a low-fiber diet. In recent years, right-wing influencers have promoted a “meat-only” diet—eating like a Viking—as a form of rebellion against what they perceive as a “woke” society forcing people toward veganism. Holmwood’s works point very literally to a physical consequence of such a diet, rendering these right-wing gurus more human, and perhaps also more ridiculous.

Alexander Höglund’s work "Rose Was Here" (2026) cannot be seen, yet it is unmistakably present in the room. We encounter the scent of a perfume produced by the artist himself. To whom does it belong? As when entering an empty elevator and detecting a neighbor’s perfume, our minds begin constructing an image of the absent person. Who passed through here just moments ago, leaving their trace? Smell is intimately connected to memory, capable of propelling us back to places and people long lost. In Höglund’s work, we are invited to imagine and construct a new person—or project onto someone we already know. The presence becomes almost stronger than if the person were physically in the room.

Ah, yes—back to the bicycle excursion. I was called “Mud” for the rest of the term. The teacher from whom I had borrowed the bicycle arrived at school the following day riding an old, rusty women’s bike. Presumably, the one I had borrowed was replaceable. I did not dare meet his gaze.

Richard Krantz


The title of the exhibition is borrowed from Tao Lin’s book Leave Society.*

Special thanks to Linus Svensson
Special thanks to Emil Carlsiö