Simen Johan at Scandinavia House

Work by Simen Johan is included in A Time for Everything: 25 Years of Contemporary Art, a group exhibition at Scandinavia House, New York, NY. A Time for Everything is curated by Emily Stoddart, Manager of Exhibitions, and is on view from October 18, 2025 through February 2026.

 

Johan will speak at an artist and curator talk on Saturday, October 18 at 3:00 PM, alongside artists Margrethe Aanestad, Ole Brodersen, curator and art historian Karin Hellandsjø, and the exhibition’s curator Emily Stoddart. Register for the talk and find out more on Scandinavia House's website here.

 

The exhibition, celebrating the 25th anniversary of Scandinavia House, highlights its legacy of fostering dialogue between Nordic and American voices across the contemporary artistic landscape.

 

From Scandinavia House: Borrowing from the title of the seminal 2004 book by Karl Ove Knausgård, A Time for Everything presents a diverse range of work in a variety of media by celebrated Nordic artists: from Marianne Huotari’s reimagined version of the traditional Finnish textile technique ryijy via glazed stoneware sculptures, to Pekka & Teija Isorättyä’s humorous and delicate play on mechanical and digital engineering and the beauty of machines, to the surreal nature of painter Thordis Adalsteinsdottir’s ultra-flat compositions combining anthropomorphic animals and eccentric non-sensical objects, which evoke whimsy while belying a more sinister undertone. Curiosity, humor, criticality, artifice, reverence for the natural world and romanticism appear throughout Torbjørn Rødland’s work (and often in the same image), while the powerful and influential woodcuts of John Savio are arguably the first modern Sámi artistic expression from the 1930s. The exhibition also premieres new works by a number of leading Nordic artists: Margrethe Aanestad, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Sara-Vide Ericsen, Britta Marakatt-Labba, The Icelandic Love Corporation, Shoplifter/Hrafnhildur Arnasdóttir and Katrín Sigurðardóttir.