OpenType

In 2018, the Municipality of Örebro decided to completely renovate and redesign the square in Glanshammar. As part of the remodel, Jenny Lindblom’s OpenType joined Richard Brixel’s sculpture Stenhuggaren (The Stonemason), which was already installed on the site. Lindblom’s work borrows the shape of a regular park bench, inviting visitors to rest for a bit while enjoying a view of the square.

The seat has been given a slightly more sombre tone through the artist’s choice of material: here, you don’t sit on wooden planks but rather on marble slabs, quite suitable for the old quarry district of Glanshammar, which made a name for itself with its Ekeberg marble. The words “EXISTENCE LIGHT” are engraved and gilded on the backrest. Existence Light is the name of a font and OpenType is a digital font format that enables a rich variety of fonts.

The artwork is open for many different interpretations and associations. The extravagant material choices and references to text design inspire thoughts about form, design and appearance, while the inscription seems to suggest a somewhat bitter attitude to life and being, where philosophical reflections on existence are bound together with the “light” versions of our modern consumer society. What do you see in the artwork?

Jenny Lindblom studied at the Gerrit Rietveld. Academie in Amsterdam and has exhibited in both the Netherlands and Sweden. When OpenType was unveiled in 2019, it became the artist’s first permanently installed public artwork.