Mikael Olsson
Södrakull Frösakull

Fondazione Collegio Venturoli
Bologna, Italy
November 7– December 14, 2025

The VII Biennial of Photography on Industry and Work is dedicated
to the theme of the HOME under the artistic direction of
Francesco Zanot.
Fondazione MAST/ FOTO INDUSTRIA


Mikael Olsson’s Södrakull Frösakull project centres on two
emblematic houses by modernist architect and designer Bruno
Mathsson, built in the 1950s and 1960s respectively: Södra-
kull and Frösakull. They are not just houses, but programmatic
declarations, radical experiments in the relationship between the
individual and the environment, between domestic space and
the natural landscape. Mathsson conceived these buildings as
permeable organisms, capable of embracing light and dissolving
the boundaries between interior and exterior. The large glass
surfaces, essential lines and warm colours of the materials reflect
the idea of the home as a place of freedom rather than confine-
ment, engaging in an ongoing conversation with the surrounding
world.

Olsson photographed Södrakull and Frösakull over a long peri-
od stretching from 2000 to 2006. From the outset his approach
differed greatly from that of both the architectural historian
(who searches for traces, roots and motivations) and of the
documentary photographer (who records facts). Instead, he used
photography as an instrument for exploration and interpretation.
His practice does not adhere to the codes of architectural photo-
graphy – based on clarity, neutrality of the gaze and the accurate
reproduction of forms – but transforms buildings into vital,
enigmatic, perturbing presences. In his photographs Södrakull
and Frösakull appear to be in a state of suspension: sometimes
immersed in a metaphysical silence, on other occasions traversed
by fragments of life, signs of use, details that convey the intimacy
of living. What emerges, then, is not just the geometric perfec-
tion of the buildings, the purity of the architectural design, but
also their fragility, the way they absorb and reflect the passage of
time, deteriorate, and preserve stratifications and memories.

Nature, a pivotal element in Mathsson’s work, is no mere back-
drop in Olsson’s photographs but rather an integral part of their
structure. The trees mirrored in the windows, the dust covering
the surfaces, the light reflections that form differently on each
material, the air and oxygen circulating in the rooms, are the
main characters of a story that interweaves architecture and
landscape. It is as if the houses are breathing together with the
forest around them, merging the inside and the outside and
opening up the domestic space to a total sensorial experience.
At the same time, Olsson allows a constant tension between
presence and absence to emerge in his images: he never shows
the houses in their entirety, but accumulates fragments, glimpses
and details. It is as if Mathsson’s work can never be captured in
full. But it is also a reflection of Olsson’s own working method:
he returned to photograph the buildings many times, repeating,
researching, reproducing and delving deeper. Södrakull Frös-
akull is the result of the deepattraction of a visual artist towards
the work of an architect who had a visceral connectionwith
everything relating to nature, so much so that he organized his
life (he was a pioneer of naturism, nudism and fitness) and his
houses to capture every last possible fragment of its inexhaustible
energy.

Francesco Zanot

Ten exhibitions will be set up in seven venues across Bologna’s
historic city center until December 14, while the eleventh
exhibition, Living, Working, Surviving by Canadian artist Jeff
Wall, curated by Urs Stahel, will be hosted in the MAST. Galleries
Foto/Industria artist; Forensic Architecture, Ursula Schulz-
Dornburg, Moira Ricci, Sisto Sisti, Kelly O’Brien, Vuyo Mabheka,
Julia Gaisbacher, Alejandro Cartagena, Matei Bejenaru.