YRJO EDELMANN

ARTIST STATEMENT

Yrjo Edelmann (born in 1941) is one of Sweden’s best-known artists abroad.  His breakthrough was in 1993 when he was the second Sweden ever, after the glass designer Bertil Vallien, to be one of the artists in the famous Absolute Vodka advertising campaign.  Edelmann wrapped the vodka bottle in coloured silk paper and taped it with masking tape.  Then he painted the wrapped bottle.  It was a success and Yrjo Edelmann wound up in the company of world-famous artists like Andy Warhol and Keith Haring.  Lately his “parcels” have developed more and more complicated and ambiguous compositions of several boxes wrapped in bright paper.  Yrjo Edelmann has been called the great illusionist in Swedish contemporary art.  Few if any achieve his technical dexterity.  It makes him unique as an artist in that he combines the classical tradition of the old masters with an enigmatic contemporary image world. 

                                                                      Goran Hellstrom