Patience (game) at Malmö Konstmuseum

‘What is the probability of knowing the probability, of knowing it too well, of knowing it too early, of knowing what will happen, of knowing before others know, of knowing before it happens, of knowing and still waiting, of waiting and still knowing?’

– Jaakko Pallasvuo, Fortune, 2025

The experience of entering an abandoned building can be similar to visiting an exhibition; it focuses one’s attention and heightens one’s senses. The ambition behind the group exhibition ‘Patience (game)’ is to present a total installation incorporating the artworks within the former casino’s interior. Ghostly figures in the dimly lit rooms. Remnants of what once was, all the shattered dreams, and layers of stories embedded in the walls.

Patience is a card game for one person. It is not a frantic gambling game, but rather meditative in nature. Is it possible to win when playing against oneself? The word comes from the French patience, which until the early 1800s only referred to the virtue of patience – i.e. to calmly and silently endure while in anticipation. The title refers to the history of the building and the patience required with respect to the events that have occurred here.

Most of the works by Benedikte Bjerre, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Matti Sumari, and Viktor Timofeev were exclusively created for the exhibition ‘Patience (game)‘.

Matti Sumari presents new sculptures that engage in dialogue with the building’s eclectic history, as well as with the Franciscan monastery and the herbaceous garden that was located on the site during the 1400s. Viktor Timofeev’s large-scale installations engage the arbitrary nature of time and language, and concern migration, mother tongues, and alienation. Jaakko Pallasvuo has explored the mechanisms of gambling in relation to the pursuit of personal improvement or social mobility, as well as the aesthetics connected to notions of luck and the accumulation of wealth. Benedikte Bjerre’s installation explores relationships between the individual and the collective, as well as modes of control, and their limits.

Here, the newly produced works occupy the abandoned gambling halls and will remain in place for the foreseeable future. Unlike the art museum’s regular exhibition program, which involves tearing down walls, rebuilding, and repainting them for each new installation. The die has been cast.