Public Service Gallery (SE)

The Stockholm-based gallery Public Service is dedicated to shaping an innovative programme with a global outlook, showcasing emerging to mid-career international artists to a Scandinavian audience. Public Service Gallery is run by Peter Gerdman, who together with Axel Söderberg founded the gallery in 2022.

Curated for
CHART

For CHART 2025, Public Service Gallery will present new works by Gianni Politi (IT), Anne Sofie Djernis (DK), and Valentin Ranger (FR). Viewers are invited to consider different forms of abstraction where there is an important trace of a figurative starting point, for both Gianni Politi and Anne Sofie Djernis. Their individual practices both share movement and a physicality in their approach to painting, while Valentin Ranger’s practice can be placed somewhere on the opposite side of the spectrum.

Gianni Politi (IT)

Gianni Politi’s practice, mainly as a painter, is deeply rooted in both the classical and modern pictorial traditions of his native Italy, and his work strives to narrate the struggle of being a contemporary painter today. His desire to understand the relationship between past and present is a driving force behind his painting, which shifts between abstract and figurative images—and from very large to very small canvases. His large abstract paintings are often reflections on struggle, some literally inspired by military battles, others concerned with issues of contemporary society; the paintings are made by slashing and cutting works already made, and reassembling the different pieces onto larger canvases thus creating deeper new entities in a swirling dynamic.

Gianni Politi (b. 1986, Rome; IT) lives and works in Rome, Italy. Politi’s work has been shown in numerous Italian institutions including the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, MACRO, Rome, and Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Palermo. Politi has had solo exhibitions in Italy, New York and Hong Kong. His recent projects include a performance at Palazzo Barberini, Rome, 2021; a show curated by Sarah McCrory of sculpture and painting at Monteverdi, Siena; bronzes and paintings at Fonderia Battaglia, Milan, 2018; paintings at McNamara Art Projects, Hong Kong, 2018; bronzes at 56 Henry Street, New York, 2018; and shows at Nomas Foundation, Rome, 2015; MAXXI, Rome, 2015; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, 2014; Istituto di Cultura Italiana, Prague, 2014.

Maiorca, Inner Ocean Exploration

Oil and acrylic on canvas
2024

Courtesy of the artist and Public Service Gallery

 

Pensi davvero che chi di verde si veste belta sua non temi?

Oil and acrylic on canvas
2020

Courtesy of the artist and Public Service Gallery

 

Portrait of Gianni Politi

Courtesy of the artist and Public Service Gallery

Anne Sofie Djernis (DK)

Anne Sofie Djernis practice is heavily focused on painting, while emphasising her ambivalence towards the medium. This becomes a driving force in investigating the nature of the medium itself, its purpose, while also guiding the physical manifestation of the resulting artworks. Her painterly process is centred around bodily intuition and sensitivities - and the friction that occurs between them and a visual starting point. As such, Djernis departs from existing figurative material, which she subsequently alters and transforms through a bodily process, where movement, intensity and sensation are the primary focus. Inherently examining how the visual starting point of an artwork is erased through the act of painting.

Anne Sofie Djernis (b. 1993, Allerød; DK) lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. The artist received an MFA from Malmö Art Academy in 2024, and a BFA from The Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design at Bergen University in 2022. Her works have been featured in exhibitions at Minor Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark; Museum of Public Art & Sketches, Lund, Sweden; Lokale Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark; Arden Asbæk Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark; Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark and Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway, amongst others. She was the recipient of the Edstrandska Stiftelsens stipend in 2024. Her works will be included in Edstrandska Stiftelsens grant exhibition, Malmö in 2024, and at Pumphuset Konsthall, Landskrona in 2025, both in Sweden.

Road less traveled

Oil, pastel, spray enamel on aluminum
2022

Courtesy of the artist and Public Service Gallery

 

Perfume (an eternal Broadway splash)

Oil, pastel, spray enamel on aluminum
2023

Courtesy of the artist and Public Service Gallery

 

Portrait of Anne Sofie Djernis

Courtesy of the artist and Public Service Gallery

Valentin Ranger (FR)

Through his drawings, paintings, 3D films, and sculptural installations, Valentin Ranger unfolds a dreamlike world in constant mutation, mirroring the human body, which is his main subject of study. In richly detailed settings or virtual rooms traversed in 360°, the artist stages hybrid characters and cellular forms pulsating with the rhythm of an indeterminate organism. Across different mediums, he writes the saga of a community where marginalized or invisible populations—sexual and gender minorities—come together to forge new forms of solidarity.

Valentin Ranger (b.1992, Paris; FR) lives and works in Paris, France. After studying theater, he graduated with a double MFA from the Royal College of Art in London and the Beaux-Arts de Paris, with honors from the jury. His works have been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2023); the Institut Français, Madrid (2023); Hôtel des Arts TPM, Toulon (2023); Galerie du jour / La Fab, Paris (2022); Galerie Municipale Jean Collet, Vitry-sur-Seine (2022); Révélations Emer-ige, Paris (2022); Studio des Acacias, Reiffers Art Initiatives, Paris (2022); FRAC Ile de France, Château de Rentilly (2020); the Villa Noailles, Hyères (2020). Valentin Ranger is the recipient of the Prix des Amis des Beaux-Arts agnès b (2021) and the Special Jury Prize, Révélations Emerige (2022).

Dague du coupe de foudre

3D printed Resin
2024

Courtesy of the artist and Public Service Gallery

 

Mort

3D print
2024

Courtesy of the artist and Public Service Gallery

 

Valentin Ranger at Public Service Gallery

Installation view
2024-2025

Courtesy of the artist and Public Service Gallery

 

Portrait of Valentin Ranger

Courtesy of the artist and Public Service Gallery

Anne Sofie Djernis, There is No Emotional Connection to Numbers on a Gravestone Without a Story Being Told, Installation View, 2024

Courtesy of the artist and Public Service Gallery

Public Service Gallery facade at night

Courtesy of Public Service Gallery