Gunnel Wåhlstrand
Turku Art Museum
Through 14 September 2025
Photographer: Mikael Olsson
Rose, 2020
Ink-wash on paper, 125 x 154 cm
Private Collection
Photograph: Jean-Baptiste Béranger
Wave, 2015
Ink-wash on paper, 245 x 160 cm
Private Collection
Photograph: Per-Erik Adamsson
The Last Island, 2012
Ink-wash on paper, 157 x 218 cm
Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm
Photograph: Jean-Baptiste Béranger
Gunnel Wåhlstrand, one of Sweden’s most prominent contemporary artists, is known for her large-scale ink-wash paintings that depict memories, people, and landscapes with photographic precision and poetic sensitivity. Her works are rooted in her own personal history and explore memory, the connections between past and present, and the quiet depths of human existence.
Painting with ink on large paper is a slow, meditative process that demands the utmost precision. Gunnel Wåhlstrand does not paint the darkest darks right away; instead, the lights, shadows, and subtle tones in between emerge from the interplay between the saturation of the ink, the many transparent layers, and the light-bearing space of the paper. The irreversible method allows no room for error, and being aware of these risks helps the artist maintain focus. Through patient repetition, Gunnel Wåhlstrand creates mesmerizingly beautiful worlds that convey a sense of intense presence. Gunnel Wåhlstrand can spend up to six months committed to each painting, and her production is purposefully sparse—54 works in the past 23 years.
Mother Profile, 2009
Ink-wash on paper, 188,5 x 137,5 cm
Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm
Photograph: Björn Larsson
White Peacock, 2007-2009
Ink-wash on paper, 109 x 160 cm
Private Collection
Photograph: Björn Larsson
Gunnel Wåhlstrand bases her work on her personal history, photographs from her family album, and, more recently, her own snapshots of places saturated with memory. For over a decade, her art has sought to bridge the distance to her father, who took his own life when she was just one year old. His death was not talked about in the family, and even as a child, Gunnel Wåhlstrand turned to old family photographs in an attempt to understand him. The large scale of the paintings and the painstaking working method evolved from the artist’s deep need to linger in the process and immerse herself in the world of these images. Transcending time and space, her paintings interweave the gazes of different generations—gazes shaped by absence and distance. In her more recent works, the artist’s own experiences and memories of the photographed places merge with the intimate, inner world of the painted landscapes. The linear passage of time seems to shift, as if opening toward eternity.
Långedrag, 2004
Ink-wash on paper, 209 x 157 cm / 192 x 140 cm
Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm
Photograph: Björn Larsson
The Desk, 2004
Ink-wash on paper, 206 x 157 cm
Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation
Maria Bonnier Dahlins Stiftelse
By the Window, 2003
Ink-wash on paper, 151 x 198 cm
Collection Michael Storåkers
Photograph: Björn Larsson
The artist’s first solo exhibition in Finland presents works spanning her entire career from 2002 to 2023. The works are on loan from private and public collections, including Andréhn-Schiptjenko Gallery, the Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation, Magasin III Museum of Contemporary Art, Malmö Art Museum, the Nordic Watercolour Museum, and the Sten A. Olsson Foundation. The exhibition is produced in collaboration with Prince Eugen’s Waldemarsudde and curated by Selina Kiiskinen and Kari Immonen from Turku Art Museum.
Gunnel Wåhlstrand (b. 1974, Uppsala) lives and works in Stockholm. She made her breakthrough immediately after graduating from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 2003. Her recent solo exhibitions have been held at Prince Eugen’s Waldemarsudde (2024), Gothenburg Art Museum (2019), Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam (2017), and Magasin III in Stockholm (2017).
TURKU ART MUSEUM
Aurakatu 26, 20100 Turku
Gunnel Wahlstrand
Turku Art Museum , 6 June –14 September 2025
