Staring at the walls

Once we arrived at the secret floor level, we were welcomed by President and CEO Tomas Puusepp, who introduced Peter Hagdahl and Johan Scott, two of the artists whose work can be found in Elekta, and who would be our guides that evening.

Presentation by Tomas Puusep, President and CEO at Elekta AB

Hagdahl, the first Professor of New Media at the Royal College of Fine Art in Stockholm and Scott, Professor of Art and member of the Royal College of Fine Art in Stockholm, had approached Elekta and other companies with the idea of incorporating art and culture exhibitions into working environments and running arty seminars and other events for employees. Elekta was keen and the collaboration began.

"Usually we think of art as a big experiment," said Peter Hagdahl. "So, it's very good to have companies that support this experiment. We were jumping in the dark (well, not in total darkness) but we landed well."

Johan Scott commented, "My biggest problem is in understanding what colour is. This summer I made a painting with 166 colours just to show that it is impossible to choose only one colour."

Participants mingle

At Elekta, staring at the walls is not only acceptable behaviour, it is unashamedly encouraged! This is because the walls in Elekta are littered with fantastic pieces of art.  Beautiful, colourful, inspiring, crazy, confusing and thought-provoking works line all the walls, in the hallways and rooms. From paintings, sketches and photographs to sculptures in metal, tissue paper and plastic, every wall in Elekta had something to say. And every piece ignited a feeling. Love it or hate it, understand it or rub your eyes from the cross-eyed effect it gave you, the art evoked something in all of us and thus, the tour was a success.

When asked why companies need art in their office environment, Puusepp replied, "We have very loyal employees so we wanted to create a good environment for them. Even if they are not interested directly in art it brings out discussions and 'thinking out of the box'. The art here is really out of the box, really crazy, it creates a lot of creative thoughts, dialogues and inspires."


Tomas Puusep and Lotta Särnman from Elekta AB with artists Peter Hagdahl and
Johan Scott.

Other artists represented in Elekta's collection include Curt Asker, Ulrik Samuelson, LG Lundberg, Sigrid Sandström, Martin Wickstöm, Mari Rantanen and Lars Englund.


Participants mingle

Elekta is a human care company pioneering significant innovations and clinical solutions for treating cancer and brain disorders. Elekta provides intelligent and resource-efficient technologies that improve, prolong and save patient lives. They currently have over 3,300 employees worldwide and net sales of nearly 8 billion kronor.

Written exclusively for AmCham Sweden by Salza Ting Andersson, Battison & Partners AB
Photos by Alexander Farnsworth