Review: Ravinen Kulturhus

Ravinen Kulturhus is anchored by a very specific vision – one shaped over decades by artists Ulla and Gustav Kraitz. The goal was never to create a white-cube gallery or an echo chamber of contemporary trends. It was to build a place where serious art could meet the public on open terms, surrounded by nature, designed for return visits.

A programme for the long look

The programme is broad but precise. Tal R’s ‘Weather Report opened the 2024 season with charged, expressive colour and dreamlike energy. That was followed by a luminous, widely visited exhibition by Lars Lerin – Sweden’s most beloved watercolourist. Next came Palace Garden, a contemporary glass show featuring Åsa Jungnelius, Markus Åkesson and Bertil Vallien. In 2025, the focus shifted again: from the Schyl collection of avant-garde international works to the raw, inverted intimacy of Charlotte Gyllenhammar’s sculpture and video. It’s a mix of materials, voices and scales – but there’s always a seriousness behind the selection.

What ties it together is the feeling that Ravinen speaks both locally and internationally. The audience is design-aware, culturally engaged, often returning. Families with sketchpads. Retired art teachers. Groups of children who make use of the creative workshop. Curious travellers who’ve rented a car and gone slightly off course. The building invites this kind of visitor – someone who comes for an hour and ends up staying the day.

We found it small enough to delve deep, but just large enough to impress and inspire. There’s a clarity to the experience – from room to room, artist to idea – that makes it easy to connect with.

A collection that absorbs rather than dazzles

We visited on a bright April morning. The main hall – vast, high-ceilinged, reverberant – seemed to swallow light and artwork alike. But not in a bad way. The architecture allows the pieces room to breathe. The exhibition Gärna Avantgardistisk Konst – drawn from the Schyl donation and curated by Sune Nordgren – opened with a standout: Jules Schyl’s dandified self-portrait, witty and sharp. On the same wall, a textured Per Kirkeby loomed, full of layered tension.

Jules and Karin Schyl were collectors with a clear curatorial sensibility. Their collection – held by Malmö Konsthall – is now presented in a new context at Ravinen. The title Gärna Avantgardistisk Konst (preferably avant-garde art in English) is drawn from their own words, and the selection leans into that preference with insistence. The roll call reads like a precise survey of postwar materialism and form: Donald Baechler, Antony Gormley, Imi Knoebel, Victor Vasarely, Andres Serrano and Gilbert & George, to name a few – all speaking in different registers. The show asks you to look longer, think harder. And it rewards that effort.

In the second gallery, the tone shifted. Narrower and lined with floor-to-ceiling glass, it offered a conversation between art and nature. The framing of the Kattegatt strait through bare tree branches felt intentional. Works by Leon Tarasewicz, Richard Long, Bjørn-Sigurd Tufta and Olav Christopher Jenssen played with organic forms and earthy textures, grounding the room in its setting. For a moment, the view became part of the art.

Legacy in clay and fire

Next to the main galleries, the Kraitz hall turned the mood again. A quieter room with a different gravity, it offered a look into the lives and work of Ravinen’s founding couple, Ulla and Gustav Kraitz. Sculptural pieces sat like anchors – weighty, fired, resolved – while vitrines of photographs and sketches grounded their international practice in the soil of Skåne. Their work with glazes, casting and high-temperature wood firing reveals a long commitment to craft and symbolism, with recurring forms drawn from nature: embryos, seeds, pods, stones. The exhibition coincides with the release of a new monograph on their decades-long collaboration.

Outside, toward the water, the beginnings of a sculpture garden extend the experience. Still forming, but already promising something open-ended – like Ravinen itself.

A sharp edit – and a lunch that holds its own

Before leaving, we circled back to the museum shop – modest in size but tightly curated. The selection leans toward books, ceramics and design objects, many tied to current and past exhibitions. You’ll find works by the Kraitzs, but also newer names from the region – pieces that feel grounded, not gift-shop generic.

Then there was lunch – and it shouldn’t be skipped. Ravinen Café & Bistro, run by Head Chef John Moberg with Pastry Chef Eva Mattsson and Chef Petter Bratt, draws on Båstad’s growers, producers and even winemakers, leaning seasonal and unfussy. It’s a plate-by-plate reflection of the landscape outside – artfully done, without overreaching.