The Prince Eugen-Medal for Outstanding Artistic Work 2021
Statement:
Lager has not only created a unique expression within textile art, she has even developed her own technique. Her poetic, and at the same time, photorealistic world of pictures grows out of her own sewing machine.
With an endless amount of stitches, in as many color nuances, Malin Lager’s art is created. The motifs often focus on details - such as a branch, a lichen, a cobblestone, a puddle - and it is through these that the world becomes perceptible and life becomes visible. And Time. Malin Lager’s pictures deal with time. Time to create and time to live. About mankind who, during their life on earth, leave traces.
Exerpt from Monterey Herald June 5 2014
You have to see Malin Lager’s artwork to believe and appreciate them. The Swedish artist uses neither paint nor brush. Her medium of choice is the sewing machine. But her works are so compelling that your mind assumes they are paintings. Until you look closely.
The layers of cloth are invisible under the intricate, vibrant needlework of her machine. The grasses take on a realistic texture and the long, delicate stems seem to sway in the wind.
Exerpt from Dagens Nyheter Maj 31 2003
........This exhibition reaches heights that are - I can’t find a better word - ‘sublime’. Especially dazzling is a suite of impressionistic pieces on the worn down cobblestones of Venice. Pictures that from some feet away appear commonplace studies of reflected light, upon coming closer dissolve into a tangle of tiny stitches. All of a sudden they appear as something else, like a pressure chamber of slowly recovered time.
This art hits you like a bolt of lightning. Something thorough, unique and highly sensual. A weakness in my knees, a tunnel looking toward the unknown.........
Dan Jönsson
Exerpt from Kyrkans Tidning 2005
The Biginning and the End in Needle and Thread.
...In a room at the Textile Museum time stands still. The artist Malin Lager’s pieces entitled “Birth and Death - Both a Birth” create a tension that breathes sanctity. Malin Lager has skillfully captured this feeling in two large pictures in a specially prepared room at the museum. The room is simple, sacramental and, together with some other objects that touch on the same theme, these works provide a superb example of what contemporary art can bring to the eternal questions......
Barbro Matsols
Excerpt from Borås Tidning May 2005
The Great Within the Small.
“It was like a revelation when i discovered that I could draw with my sewing-machine” says Malin Lager.
The same revelation will probably hit most of the visitors to this exhibition. It is like walking around on the cliffs and examining the smallest plant structures close up and then taking a step backward and experiencing how the sunlight washes over the cliffs and unites with the golden lichens. The dazzling encounter takes place between macrocosm and microcosm - the unified wholeness of nature is reflected in it’s minutest aspects. This couldn’t be better depicted than in these 25 small pictures that together make up this magnificent whole.
Inger Landström
Exerpt from Dagens Nyheter November 11 1994
Malin Lager Hits the Tactile Nerve.
.......The strongly original work of Malin Lager isn’t only nerve-tingling, it’s also an example of how the textile picture now has detached itself from it’s traditional function and has unashamedly taken it’s own place in the painting arena.
Jessica Kempe
