Born in Lerum, Sweden. Department of Photography and Film, Göteborgs University, Sweden (1993-96), (Lead by Gertrud Sandqvist Tuija Lindström and Gunilla Knape. Teachers Lewis Baltz, Mary Kelly, Bruce Davidsson, Andres Serrano, Sven Westerlund, Nan Goldin among others). Brooks University of Photography,Santa Barbara, CA (1995) (Scholarship from Hasselblad Foundation.)
Recent solo exhibitions include Södrakull Frösakull at House of Sweden, Washington DC (2012) and Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, Columbia University, New York (2011); Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm (2010); and Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg (2009). Mikael Olsson’s film KOSTA 3:30 (in collaboration with Andreas Roth. Sound Carsten Nicolai) has been screened at CINEORAMA, Düsseldorf (2012); Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg (2009); DOKU.ARTS, Akademie der Kuenste, Berlin (2007) and Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2006). Mikael Olsson and Jakob Marky´s film SALLE 2:118 SIRI has been screened at Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2011) together with Siri Derkert. He has participated in group exhibitions such as, Gathered Fates, Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin (2015), Platsens själ, Artipelag (2012); STENA15, Göteborgs Konstmuseum (2011); Momentum Design, Momentum Kunsthall, Moss and From the Collection, Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg (2010); Instabilt, Kulturhuset, Stockholm and Bildmuseet, Umeå (2004); Insight-Out, Kunstraum Innsbruck; Kunsthaus Baselland; Kunsthaus Hamburg (1999); and Speed of Life, Uppsala Konst- museum (1998).
Lectures at DARCH ETH, Zürich, CH invited by Professor Christian Kerez; Columbia University, New York, USA invited by Mark Wasiuta and Mark Wigley; Herzog & de Meuron, Basel, CH; KTH School of Architecture, Stockholm, SE ; The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen.
Commissions for New York Times Magazine, Christian Kerez Architect among others
In his previous work Södrakull Frösakull (Steidl, 2011), he portrays the relationship between man, nature and architecture in a series of images that invoke memory, space, time and structures.
Upcoming publication Steidl 2016: Mikael Olsson – on | auf In on | auf the Swedish artist Mikael Olsson undertakes a photographic interpretation of the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron’s and the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s temporary pavilion at the Serpentine Gallery in London. By investigating the traces of their creative processes in their archives, and exploring the relation between the structure and its various contexts, Olsson creates images that follow and go beyond the object – visual narrative uncovering issues of memory, identity and perception.
The Hungarian author Péter Nádas introduces in his essay “Loaned Landscapes, Borrowed Objects. The Real Space of the Image and the Representation of Space in Mikael Olsson’s Photography.”
”The images of Mikael Olsson are held by the tension between visual faculties and visual conventions, the reality of perception and the reality of vision, of the concrete and the abstract.” Péter Nádas
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