About love and the gap between what we want, desire, long for, need – and reality.

Part of the exhibition ”In-Betweenness” at gallery Studio 44, Stockholm, January 2026.

”All You Need Is Love” is an installation with two photographs surrounding a large text scroll. The text consists of excerpts from love songs from the 40s to the present.

About the photographs
The two photographs are 100 x 100 cm each, mounted on 10 cm foam board/kapaskartong.
Concept, image processing and realization: Gunilla Leander
The couple: Maria Astrid Jansson and Anton L Samuelsson
Photographer: Ulf Aneer

About the text scroll
The text scroll is 150 cm wide and 5.5 meters high (4 meters visible), texted with Chinese ink on Fabriano drawing paper 200g.

The text scroll is like a Chinese scroll of calligraphy, or like a river of words of love. Something that just keeps going on.

I have chosen love songs from the 40s to the present. I have also mixed both English and Swedish love songs, mostly English. But I could have chosen any language, because love songs exist in all languages – and from all eras. Even AI is now creating love songs … If you pick out lines of lyrics from love songs, some are filled with so much passion and overwhelming, almost laughable, expressions of emotion.

Three young guys at the opening analyzed the work intensely and said that in our digital age where you scroll through the most fantastic expressions, the expectation of love becomes too great and you just want to constantly exchange it for something better and better. Whereas before you weren’t so stressed, you fell in love with a person and then stuck with that person your whole life (usually…).

» Here you can read the entire text as PDF

©Gunilla Leander

Med stöd av Riksförbundet Sveriges Konstföreningar och Kulturrådet