| Nils Thornander | |
| Birth Date: | 3 May 1958 |
| Birth Place: | Stockholm, Sweden |
| Death Place: | Paris, France |
| Nationality: | French |
| Occupation: | Artist Composer |
| Education: | Lycée Condorcet |
Nils Thornander (3 May 1958 – 10 June 2022) was a Swedish-born French visual artist and composer.[1]
Thornander was born in Stockholm in 1958 to a Swedish father and a French mother. He attended the Franska Skolan, founded for French students in Stockholm in 1862. At the age of 15, he moved to France and attended the Lycée Condorcet. He was interviewed in front of the school in 1973 on the lowering of the voting age to 18.[2]
Thornander decided early on to become an experimental artist. In 1994, he wrote his "Continuum manifesto" for the Swedish magazine, in which he theorized artistic contribution to the contemporary world.[3] His approach inspired artist to write Wem är Nils Thornander?.[4] Art critic described him as a "geographer of chaos". His works were "a committed approach to achieve harmony", according to Isabelle Kevorkian.[5]
Thornander started out painting oil on canvas, but in the late 1980s began to prefer a technique involving immersive hypercubes. He preferred the use of electric light from light boxes as opposed to natural lighting. In the mid-1990s, he became interested in digital art and created a perspective on "Just From Cynthia" at the invitation of, presented at the Centre Pompidou. He worked with Mildred Simantov on "Refectory", presented at the Musée Carnavalet during the Nuit Blanche in 2010,[6] as well as the book-album "L’Age adulte, le Tuning Book", presented at the Palais de Tokyo.[7]
In 1998 collaborated with Thornander to created music for the documentary "Putzen in Paris/Paris poussière". He also led sound design for Magnus Bärtås's "Claims of Victory", presented in Seoul in 2015. He then directed music for the feature film Reception (Save The Date), directed by, in 2018.[8] In 2019, he created the musical work "Absolute Value", created at IRCAM.[9]
Nils Thornander died in Paris on 10 June 2022 at the age of 64.[10]