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CONTACT
sven[at]drobnitza.com

CV
Born 1974 in Düsseldorf, Germany. Lives in Göteborg, Sweden

EDUCATION
2009 – 2011 Valand Academy, Gothenburg University, MFA in Photography, Sweden
2006 – 2009 Valand Academy, Gothenburg University, Bachelor in Photography, Sweden
1991 – 1995 Apprenticeship as a modelmaker at Helmut Prinz, Germany

EXHIBITIONS

 

2021 „Jūras vārti” Art from the Rothko Centre Collection / Daugavpils / Latvia

2020 Vulkano Galleri – / Göteborg / Sweden
2019 „Silva Linarte” Mark Rothko Art Centre / Daugavpils / Latvia
2019 „Night Birds” / S:t.Johannes Church / Göteborg / Sweden
2018 „Shanghai Artbook Fair” / Unfold / Grafik i Väst / China
2018 „Övergånger„ ⌈ Grafik i Väst / Göteborg Sweden

2017 „Fields and Forests„ / Galleri Fabriksgatan 48/ Göteborg Sweden

2017 „Medlemsutställning“ / Galleri 54/ Göteborg Sweden
2015 „Progress∼Fremskritt / Telemark Kunstsenter Skien Norway

2014 „Seeds of Smoke“ / Galleri 54 / Göteborg Sweden

2013 ”Artistbook“ ∴
2012 ”Dead or Alive“ / Gallery Kurant / Tromsø Norway
2012 ”Å“ / Lofoten  Norway
2011  ”20´´ / Gallery 54 / Göteborg Sweden
2011 ”New Nordic Photography” / Hasselblad Center / Göteborg Sweden
2011 Fotografins Hus / Stockholm Sweden
2011 ”Walking“ / Gallery Lalaland Sweden
2011 ”När det händer” / Göteborg Konsthall / Sweden
2011 ”Surrounded By Seven” Allingsås Konsthall / Sweden
2011 ”Befreiung wenn Ve(r)einigung” Vasaparken / Göteborg Sweden
2010 „You know, it´s not the Guggenheim“ / Gallery Monitor / Göteborg Sweden
2010 Passage 3094 / Hff / Göteborg Sweden
2009 Zoo 23 / Ok Dis Ko / Düsseldorf Germany
2009 „Empire“ / Atalante / Göteborg Sweden
2009 Examenutställning/ Röda Sten /  Göteborg Sweden
2009 Fotomässan / Göteborg Sweden
2008 +57°42´2.83“ +11°58´17.31 / Gallery Monitor / Göteborg Sweden
2008 „Privat Public“ / Gallery Monitor / Göteborg Sweden
2007 „Ways to say we care“ Göteborg City Museum Sweden
2006 „Ways to say we care“ / Gallery Monitor / Göteborg Sweden ↵

TEXTS
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“I twist and turn Sven Drobnitza’s thought a little, fiddling with it. So he takes walks, he walks. That is the art. What is then the artwork? The walking is not the work. The works are more like endpoints, cessations of walking. But it is not as though the artwork is the point of walking, the aim of a walk. Walking does not lead anywhere, it is always there, it just is.

The artwork relates to art as a dead-end street or an obstacle along the way. That is what a work is; something one has to overcome and be changed by, ever so slightly. It is with this newfound attention that walking continues, with an altered openness towards things in the world. It is to walk, to see, and to find, not knowing, just doing. This is where the art lies.“

Lars-Erik Hjertström Lappalainen

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“Time and observation play an important role in the work. Often started by collecting, arranging, and experimenting with everyday objects that have been left behind, overlooked, discarded. Ordinary objects like an old bit of paper, broken shards of plastic, used tea-bags, eye lashes, metal strings, and matches, used or not. Within these things are the traces of the living in them. Yet they remain silent.
These objects echo the daily activities of our lives and the traces of the meanings we make with these objects. Their relationships appear unordered to one another yet they are all figures of sensation-less or even  purposeless items and activities. Taken from their context and scaled down to their form and colour the way we conceive them is altered.”

Sara Nelson Anyuru

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Sven Drobnitza often works from the starting point of random objects he encounters, which he then begins to collect. Bits of plastic he finds in the street, pieces of soap of which there is little left – the objects are presented almost unaltered in the exhibition space. But, just the same, they contain a dualism: they represent both reality and non-reality at the same time. Using a stylistic presentation, a large number of muselets are almost transformed into images. By placing a plastic beaker and a plastic drinking straw in a corner in front of an electric fan, a hovering air sculpture is created which is at the same time a perpetual motion machine and an impossible concept.

Ida Marie Tenvik-Bringedal

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“Motivation och motiv är det “görande” i sig, den fysiska aktivitäten. I växel mellan intuition och reflektion, växer bilden fram. Vad är en målning och när blir det till – om alls. Frågan ställs om och om igen, framför ytan, den tomma duken eller pappersark och avslutas när bilden känns tillräcklig för sig själv, – likedant en landskap nöjer sig utan en betraktare.”

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People occasionally engage in discussions and activities around the meaning of life and different aspects of existence. For historical, practical or other reasons (if any) they mostly keep to popularized widespread bodies of thought. Others, like Sven, has or take the privilege (or burden) of reflecting and exploring deeper partly on his own. In his artistical work two different but in some respects related aspects of existence occupies his interest.

On the one hand, often minimalistic and with chance, he elaborates on traces of activities (of man and nature) on the level of objects and concrete phenomena, while on the other hand taking a broad societal perspective working around ideological issues of materialism and consumerism. The former approach addresses such questions as if the presence of traces is more real than the presence it is traces of. And to what extent chance is involved and what is made of it. It also problematizes the relations of past, present and future where for example the presents involves traces of past and future and vice versa.

Andreas Kühnel