Yung Lean opens his first major exhibition in Stockholm: ‘Collected Works 2016-2026’ runs until October 11

Jonatan Leandoer Håstad, known worldwide as Yung Lean, has opened his first major exhibition as a visual artist in Stockholm: “Collected Works 2016-2026,” at Torsgatan 22, the former industrial complex of the Swedish gasworks. The exhibition, which remains open until October 11, brings together a large number of works created over the last decade — paintings, collages, sculptures, drawings, dioramas and stage installations — many of them exhibited for the first time, as Hypebeast writes.

For Håstad, visual art came before music. Graffiti — not hip-hop — was his “first great love”: at the age of 11 he became obsessed with street art, and at 13, under the pseudonym Verp, he was part of a street-art collective in Hanoi, long before his worldwide fame as Yung Lean and the Sad Boys and Drain Gang movements. Only a modest show of four works in Stockholm in 2016 had previously brought his work before the public; after that, he deliberately kept his visual practice out of the spotlight — to keep it “pure.”

The exhibition marks a deep return to that world: rich colors with thick lines in “Perfekt Dejt” (2025), ceramic figures with wide smiles such as “El Jefe” (2022) — compositions the artist himself, in a recent interview for Artsy, compared to “the work of a caveman.” Also debuting is “Slåtter,” a short film executive-produced by and starring Håstad himself, inspired by Swedish folklore, his mother’s cabin and illustrators John Bauer and Elsa Beskow. Those who cannot travel to Sweden can also explore the exhibition in a virtualized online version.

Most of the exhibition was organized without professional gallerists or curators: Håstad shared his painting studio with Benjamin Reichwald, known as Bladee, for three years, while his old friend Kaj Lindhé Gimdal helped with the curation. His aim, he says, is to inspire young artists to follow the same path — not to build a market name. Some of the sculptures will later be sold through the Bukowskis auction house. With “Collected Works 2016-2026,” the “STORM II” performance choreographed by Damien Jalet and his expected appearance this month on Netflix, Håstad is opening, as Hypebeast writes, a new era — that of the complete artist, beyond music.