MALMO.- Warhol 1968 opened at Moderna Museet Malmö. In the Turbine Hall, visitors can discover an entirely new side of the legendary Andy Warhol — a name that most of us know, but perhaps only on the surface. The exhibition features a series of unique works that are being shown for the first time at Moderna Museet Malmö. It’s a chance for visitors to experience a unique collection of the album covers Warhol designed, his famous cow wallpaper, Ten-Foot Flowers, Electric Chair, and more.

1968 was a politically tumultuous year both in Sweden and in the rest of the world. It was also a dramatic year for Andy Warhol. And that is what we’ll explore in the exhibition Warhol 1968, which opened on March 30 at Moderna Museet Malmö.

In 1968 Andy Warhol had his very first solo museum exhibition, and it was at Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Just a few months after it closed, he was shot in an attempt to murder him. After that, Warhol began exploring new directions and became a more commercially calculating artist. The exhibition Warhol 1968 is curated by John Peter Nilsson, the former Museum Director at Moderna Museet Malmö. He says he’s happy to be returning to Malmö with an exhibition that features a series of unique works that are being shown in the Turbine Hall for the first time:

Why should people come and see this exhibition?
“We have created a distinctive ambiance for this exhibition, with silver foil walls, quotations, photographic wallpaper, and a soundtrack with all of The Velvet Underground’s songs. The experience resonates both with Warhol’s exhibition in Stockholm in 1968 and with the spirit of that time. The attempt on Warhol’s life three months after the Stockholm exhibition was a turning point both in his personal life and in his work as an artist, which is illuminated in our exhibition of paintings, prints, photographs, and more. Warhol wanted to create a total experience through his exhibitions, and that’s something I’ve embraced here.”

How did Andy Warhol become such a big artist that his name and his work live on to this day?
“In the 1960s, the Canadian media theoretician Marshall McLuhan wrote that as popular culture and capitalism grew during the twentieth century, they gradually overtook the role of religion in society—but with the difference that capitalism is built on continually evolving consumption, while religion stands for something eternal that can’t be consumed. Warhol’s empty, superficial pictures of product packaging, celebrities, or news photos capture precisely the superficiality of consumer and mass media society. However, that doesn’t mean that his art is superficial; instead, it was a metaphorical emblem of emptiness and vanity.”

What do you think is the most common misunderstanding about Andy Warhol?
“That he was a cynic who figured out you can sell anything with the right marketing.”

What is Andy Warhol’s relevance to art today?
“Warhol’s Catholic faith is something that wasn’t discussed until recently. He lived out his faith as a wayward follower, regardless of whether the religion was Catholicism or Capitalism—he flirted with the establishment just as much as he criticized it. This duality between reality and fiction is all too familiar in today’s society, with its “fake news” and “alternative facts.” What’s more, with all of his countless photographs, tape recordings, self-portraits, and private journals, Warhol also anticipated today’s creative revolution, in which the culture of user-centered digital media increasingly blends together with the offerings of popular culture. He turned his own existence into a work of art—as so many do today on social media.