STOCKHOLM.- Market Art Fair, the Nordic region’s longest-running premier art fair, today announces its 2025 edition, taking place 15–18 May 2025 (public days: 16/05 from 15:00 – 18/05) at Stockholm’s iconic Liljevalchs Konsthall on the island of Djurgården. Now in its 19th year, Market 2025 debuts a bold international expansion, inviting galleries, artists and collectors worldwide to experience a boutique fair with a Nordic perspective and global reach designed for discovery, dialogue and dealmaking.
Lars Nittve, Chair of Market Art Fair’s Selection Committee, says: "Market Art Fair’s growth reflects Stockholm’s emergence as a leading art destination, driven by its vibrant gallery scene. For nearly two decades, we’ve been a meeting place for galleries, artists, and collectors, united by a commitment to quality of art and meaningful connections. With its boutique scale, Market offers an intimate environment where every interaction counts. In 2025, we’re amplifying our ethos globally, inviting the world to experience a fair where art has space to shine, connections flourish, and business thrives.”
The Nordic hub for quality art, commerce, and creative exchange
Since it was established in 2006, Market Art Fair has built a reputation as the Nordic hub for serious art commerce, blending a curatorial approach with a refined yet convivial atmosphere. The participating galleries are chosen by a distinguished selection committee of experienced museum directors and curators from the Nordic region with the current committee comprising Lars Nittve (chair), museum director emeritus who founded Tate Modern, London, and former Director of Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Marie Nipper, Director of Arken in Denmark; Pilvi Kalhama, Director of EMMA Espoo Museum of Art in Finland; and Magnus af Petersens, independent curator based in Sweden. The guiding principles for selection - quality of presentation, artistic ambition, and relevance - ensure that exhibitors, whether established or emerging, prioritize bold artistic visions, making each edition of the fair feel fresh, forward-looking, and vital.
To date, Market Art Fair has presented a curated selection of solo, duo, and group presentations with the most exciting Nordic art and artists, represented by leading galleries from the Nordic countries as well as recognized international galleries representing Nordic artists. This year, for the first time in its 19 year history, the fair will feature international presentations, with galleries without Nordic ties bringing a more global perspective to the annual event.
Market Art Fair takes place at Liljevalchs Konsthall, Sweden’s first public contemporary art gallery, located on Djurgården—a tranquil island park in the heart of Stockholm offering a serene escape from the city’s bustle, while being the home to more than 20 museums, including several art institutions. Liljevalchs’ airy, light-filled interiors, blending early 20th-century Nordic Classicism with Wingårdhs’ 2021 modernist extension - with its soaring glass roof and concrete facade studded with Ingegerd Råman’s bottle end portals - create a calm and elegant setting for meaningful art commerce.
Since Participating Galleries & Artists
In its largest edition to date, Market Art Fair 2025 will unite 51 galleries, representing more than 150 artists with roots spanning Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, Sapmi, the UK, US, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Czech Republic, Colombia, Ethiopia, Somalia, Morocco, Nigeria, Brazil and Japan. Five international galleries will take part in Market Art Fair for the first time - Company Gallery (US), Schwarz Contemporary (DE), Janknegt Gallery (NL), Mini Galerie (NL) - joined by Nordic newcomers aaaa nordhavn (DK) and Bricks Gallery (DK) and Galleri Cora Hillebrand (SE).
This more expansive chapter in the fair’s history is in response to Nordic collectors’ strong demand for exceptional and diverse contemporary art - much driven by the new ‘tech entrepreneur collectors’ - and the increasingly global reach of Nordic galleries and international reputation of Nordic artists including Jeppe Hein, DK (Galleri Nicolai Wallner, DK), Arvida Byström, SE (Gallery Steinsland Berliner, SE), Iria Leino, FI (Larsen Warner, SE) and Inuuteq Storch, GL (Wilson Saplana Gallery, DK).
Stockholm has seen a remarkable upsurge in galleries in recent years, with a new generation of gallerists focused on presenting new artistic talents who capture the spirit of creativity and innovation that the city is known for. More of these galleries are displaying artists from abroad, while there is a growing number that have outposts outside the Nordic region. Marking its fifteenth anniversary at Market Art Fair, Carl Kostyál (SE/UK/IT) will present a group exhibition tracing the evolution of its programme which began in London in 2010, while Andréhn-Schiptjenko (SE/FR) will introduce Franco-Moroccan artist Amine Habki (FR) and British-Nigerian artist Ranti Bam (UK) to Nordic audiences for the first time following exhibitions at its Paris gallery. As it approaches 50 years in 2026, Galerie Nordenhake (SE/DE/MX) will introduce the satirical sculptural paintings of Berlin-based artist Sophie Reinhold (DE), which will be exhibited alongside works by Erik Thörnqvist (SE), recipient of the prestigious 2024 Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation Prize, awarded annually to young artists.
Building on the international connections of the Stockholm’s contemporary gallery scene, Market Art Fair will this year showcase notable artists from beyond the Nordic shores including Sophie Calle, FR (Wilson Saplana Gallery, DK), Matt Saunders, US (Martin Asbaek Gallery, DK), Alyson Shotz, US (GSA Gallery, SE) and Jiri Georg Dokoupil, CZ (Galleri Susanne Ottesen, DK). One of the expected highlights will be Tacita Dean, UK, who is will present a monumental ten-metre print in eight parts based on Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy in a collaboration with (Borch Editions, DK).
Emblemic for the ‘Nordic-Global’ breadth of the fair, is Finnish-born, US-based abstract painter Iria Leino (FI, 1932 - 2022), whose work returns to Liljevalchs nearly five decades after her inclusion in the 1977 group exhibition Finsk bild: aktuell skulptur, måleri och grafik. A fashion icon turned reclusive painter, Leino created luminous abstractions that have only recently gained posthumous recognition for their contribution to postwar abstraction, following the discovery of a vast body of work in her New York apartment. Larsen Warner (SE) will showcase her early series, Colour Field and Buddhist Rain, which ignited her lifelong exploration of acrylic paint’s expressive potential.
The diversity of artistic perspectives featured at Market Art Fair 2025 extends to the variety of media and creative techniques that audiences will encounter - from painting and sculpture, to photography and printmaking. Notably, several artists push the boundaries of the Nordic region’s rich craft heritage, deploying traditional techniques in fresh ways. Textile art weaves through the fair, from Loji Höskuldsson (IS)’s large-scale embroideries depicting Sweden from an Icelandic perspective and created meditatively stitch-by-stitch through a Dogme-like approach to making (V1 Gallery, DK) and Anja Fredell (SE)’s physically demanding tufted textile works using a gun-like machine (Galleri Hedenius, SE), to Rasmus Sondergaard (DK)’s process-led pieces (HAGD Contemporary, DK) and Bella Rune (SE)’s fascination with how textile techniques can be translated into other materials and media (Galleri Magnus Karlsson, SE). A high level of craftsmanship is also what defines the work of several artists with clay-based practices such as Anna Tedestam, SE (Galleri Carlson Starck, SE) and Amalia Bille, SE, (Berg Gallery, SE), as well as the ‘set designs’ of fake narratives of archeology and natural history by Klara Zetterholm, SE (ISSUES, SE), and glass artist Josefin Bravo (SE) who approaches her art of glass blowing as a live performance, accompanied by loud music and drawing on her musical background (Galleri Duerr, SE) as a double bass player.
Josefin Bravo (SE) is not the only artist whose work and practice is connected with music - unsurprising perhaps in a country that on a per capita basis is the world’s most successful exporter of music. Leo Park (SE)’s figurative works blending art historical motifs and stylistic influences with pop culture references (Gallery Steinsland Berliner, SE) will reach a wider audience with the release of The Viagra Boys’ forthcoming album for which he has done the cover art. Making a long-awaited return to the Swedish art scene following a 10 year absence, Claes Eklundh (SE) represented by Galleri Carlson Starck, SE has collaborated with prominent Swedish musicians, while Icelandic embroidery artist Loji Höskuldsson (IS) is an established fixture on Reykjavik’s thriving music scene (V1 Gallery, DK).
The narratives and themes that the showcased artists explore are as wide-ranging as their artistic media. In the open, green setting of Djurgården, artists contemplate humanity’s relationship with the natural world and our inner landscapes, concerns that in the popular imagination have become synonymous with the ‘Nordic artistic tradition’. Per Kirkeby (DK, 1938–2018) and Janaina Tschäpe (DE/BR) present contrasting yet complementary approaches to landscape in a dialogue curated by Galleri Bo Bjerggaard (DK), while several artists present works that weave together physical landscapes with mental and emotional terrains, in an attempt to capture the ‘Nordic spirit’ - from the masterful otherworldly paintings by Isak Hall (SE) using Renaissance inspired material like tempera (CFHILL, SE) to Clara Gesang Gottowt (SE)’s atmospheric canvases where skies, storms and shifting horizons serve as poetic reflections of emotional states (Galleri Nicolai Wallner, DK). Meanwhile, award-winning photographer duo Inka (FI) and Niclas Lindergård (SE) interrogate our relationship with the heightened beauty of nature photography (Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, DE); Päivi Takala (FI) reminds us of our eternal longing to be touched by nature in her nod to early Renaissance frescos (Galerie Anhava, DK); Astrid Specht Seeberg (SE) drags us deep into the sea with her clay creatures (Hans Alf Gallery, DK); and Aki Turunen’s (FI) colourful canvases explode with butterflies, birds, flowers in what seem like stills from a fairytale, raising the issue of the power relation between human and animal.
Fittingly for a fair in a city which has established itself as a world-leading hub for tech industries, the tension between technology and humanity is a recurrent theme, as in Gustav Gaston (SE)’s rooftop antennas, 5G towers and other overlooked structures dotting our urban landscapes (aaaa nordhavn,DK). Meanwhile, the assemblages of artist and environmental activist Atti Johansson (SE, 1917–2003) presented by Belenius (SE) and curated by Karolina Aastrup, curator at Sörmlands Museum, Sweden, feel more relevant than ever. Carl Kostyál (SE/UK/IT)’s fifteenth anniversary group exhibition will stretch from the generation of artists who grappled with the emergence of a technologically dominated universe to the current generation for whom that dominance has always been their reality, while the impact of social media is seen in Julia Peirone (SE)’s celebrated photography series mirror the vulnerability, shame and sexuality of girls and young women (Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, DE), and the works of Arvida Byström (SE), who shot to fame last year for her uncanny AI nude selfies (Gallery Steinsland Berliner, SE).
The construction and evolution of identity in its many different forms is explored by several other artists showing at Market 2025. Swedish-Somali Salad Hilowle (SE)’s photographs capture the African diaspora and its influence on contemporary culture (Cecilia Hillström Gallery, SE), while Swedish-Ethiopian J.G. Arvidsson (SE)’s distinct painterly language explores belonging and memory (Galleri Nicolai Wallner, DK). A strong sense of place is evoked by Ken Taylor Reynaga (US) who draws on his experience of growing up in the agricultural hub of California’s Central Valley (Brigade, DK), while Inuuteq Storch (GL)’s photography capturing Kalaallit identity and everyday life is presented as part Wilson Saplana Gallery (DK) group exhibition “Silent Power” alongside Ida Thorhauge (DK)‘s expressive paintings of monumental and mysterious female figures, and works by Sophie Calle (FR) and Mikkel Ørsted (DK).
Womanhood and femininity are explored by several other artists, including Emma Sarpaniemi (FI), whose playful and performative photographs were featured in “Les Rencontres d’Arles” in 2023 (with her Self-Portrait as Cindy becoming the marketing poster for the festival), and Emma Ainala (FI)’s dreamlike paintings, both artists presented by Helsinki Contemporary (FI). Coulisse Gallery (SE) will present ‘Origins of the Body’, with Julia Kowalska (PL)’s seductive paintings depicting the relationships and dependencies among women - sisters, mothers, and daughters - juxtaposed with Fabian Bergmark Näsman (SE)’s sculptures that start from a singular “mother mould” from which they evolve into alien-like forms.
