Jonatan Leandoer Håstad, the Stockholm-born musician better known as Yung Lean, will present his first visual art exhibition, “Collected Works 2016–2026,” at Torsgatan 22 in Stockholm from September 25th through October 11th.
The show brings together a decade of paintings, collages, works on paper, sculpture, and dioramas—most never before exhibited—alongside a site-specific installation and a new narrative short film that Håstad executive produced and stars in. Rather than a standard gallery hang, the works are staged in different environments such as a salon, a television room, and a screening room.
Håstad, who is self-taught, organized the exhibition himself rather than working with an outside curator. It follows a recent live painting installation with Adidas Originals during Paris Fashion Week earlier this year, and several Instagram teasers released by the artist.
“Ever since I can remember I dreamed of colors,” he said in a statement. “I’ve made wooden sculptures and drawings and paintings since I was a kid. Just like my songs, the work is made through stream of consciousness. I go where the hand takes me.” Following the Stockholm run, a selection of works, primarily sculptures, will go to an international online auction in partnership with Bukowskis.
The exhibition arrives amid a broader run of musicians and actors staging their own visual art shows. Last summer, Ed Sheeran opened “Cosmic Carpark Paintings” at HENI Gallery in London, a collection of Jackson Pollock-influenced drip works made in a disused carpark and sold alongside prints for £900 ($1,224) each, with half the proceeds going to the Ed Sheeran Foundation. Sheeran was direct about the reference point and about his own standing as an artist: “It’s mostly just splashing colors on canvases, think Jackson Pollock… I am by no means ’an artist,’ but I do love making art.” Academy Award-winning actor Adrien Brody similarly opened “Made in America” at Eden Gallery in New York last year, his first show of new work in nearly a decade. The show featured large-scale mixed-media paintings and a sound installation of his own composition. Its opening also followed a $425,000 sale of a collage by Brody at the amfAR Cannes gala.
In Håstad’s case, his surreal imagery has run alongside his music since he emerged as the face of the Swedish rap collective Sad Boys and the cloud rap movement that rose to popularity in the early 2010s.
“My paintings mean nothing and also everything,” said the rapper of the exhibition “Here they are.”
