Artist Jesper Nyrén @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - "Horizons" Exhibition

Jesper Nyrén: Horizons 

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki 

March 22 – April 21, 2024 

A lingering silence has descended upon Jesper Nyrén’s most recent landscapes. The artist has eliminated all excess detail and stripped down the content to the bare essentials, focusing purely on color, light and materiality. The title of the exhibition refers both to the compositional structure and the content of his landscapes. A horizon is a boundary between two physical spaces, such as that between air and land or sea. A horizon can also suggest geological layers or sediments, or boundaries between historic eras or significant events. A horizon also symbolizes the boundary between what we already know and what we cannot yet perceive.

As in the case of his previous exhibitions, Jesper Nyrén’s paintings draw inspiration from specific places and landscapes in their color scale, quality of light and materiality. Many are based on the scenery of his home island of Björkö in the Stockholm archipelago. His new exhibition also features paintings inspired by places he has visited on his travels, such as Provence in France and Northern Italy, where he recently undertook a pilgrimage following in the footsteps of master artists of past eras. 

Jesper Nyrén has now focused on paintings on a smaller scale. The artist says that his paintings take on a more intense character and the details come alive more vividly on a smaller scale. His process has meanwhile grown meditative and less physical. Although his paintings retain their usual monumentality and intensity, their essence has grown airier and more ethereal.

Jesper Nyrén (b. 1979) graduated from the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 2007. He has held numerous solo and group exhibitions in Sweden and Norway. He has received prestigious awards such as Marabouparken’s P.A.N.K award in 2008 and the Baertling Scholarship in 2015. Jesper Nyrén has additionally been awarded many public commissions in Sweden.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22 - 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

Jesper Nyrén @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - "Elements" Exhibition

Jesper Nyrén: Elements

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

29 October – 21 November 2021

The Swedish artist JESPER NYRÉN (b.1979) draws inspiration from the landscapes of his home island, where he collects raw material – both as photographs and color studies – which he transforms into sketches and eventually into paintings in his studio. Jesper Nyrén’s compositions never directly replicate real physical places, however. They are more like spatial studies of things he sees and experiences on his island. His paintings reconstruct his experiences, painting them forth in an altered form. There is no direct analogical relationship between the paintings and the landscape, nor do his colors faithfully mimic reality; rather they create moods and gradations of light that are reminiscent of how nature feels to us. Jesper Nyrén’s paintings appear to radiate their own inner light.

 

Jesper Nyrén’s compositions consist of rectangular modules arranged against a blank background. He assembles the rectangles like sculptures, as boxes stacked on top of another, balanced in perfect equilibrium, never swaying or collapsing. However, the harmony is disrupted by certain boxes being painted to distinctly resemble the sky or water, creating a dynamic tension between weight and weightlessness, splintered reality and abstraction, surface and depth.

 

JESPER NYRÉN graduated from Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Art in 2007. He has exhibited in a number of solo and group shows in Sweden and Norway. He has received prestigious awards, including the Marabouparkens P.A.N.K award in 2008 and the Baertling Scholarship in 2015. He has also completed many public commissions in Sweden.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

Jesper Nyrén @ Galerie Forsblom, Stockholm

Jesper Nyrén: Elements
Galerie Forsblom, Stockholm
Through June 5, 2020

Jesper Nyrén works methodically in his choice of color and composition. He initiates his art with impressions and studies of the nature in his surroundings and from that material the creative process starts in the studio. In his third solo exhibition at Galerie Forsblom, Jesper Nyrén returns to the grid of rectangles that appear in his previous works, but the mode of procedure differentiates slightly. In his new body of work, the fields are painted on a co-occurrent uniform background, as a ground zero. Jesper Nyrén has created a composition that is both sculptural and architectural, which at the same time has a light and airy expression.

With his technique of applying color Jesper Nyrén has created different types of materiality in the separate fields of the paintings. Having previously worked with several types of paint, such as oil and acrylics, mixed with for example sand to get a different texture, he has now created the contrasts solely by painting them. With the contrasting fields of density and surface, form and abstraction, Nyrén balances the tonality in the composition and creates a spatiality in his paintings. 

There is a fine line in estimating the placement of the different elements or building blocks; if the alignment shifts, they can collapse or break. Each entity is in need of the other parts and in that relation, between weight and weightlessness, there is a tension. The law of gravity is challenged – can the sky or the rendering of it, support the weight of the ocean or the earth?

The title of the exhibition, Elements, is important by its definition, the elements or the components allude to the composition in the paintings. The title also reflects a landscape in a period of time, affected by the season and the weather. For Jesper  Nyrén the most important thing is how the landscape and light emerge in the paintings. To render a light where the elements form an entity as a whole, and with that a recognition.

Jesper Nyrén (b. 1979) graduated from the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm in 2007. He has been shown in solo exhibitions in the Nordic countries, including at Norrtälje Konsthall, as well as in numerous group exhibitions and at the Borås International Sculpture Biennial. He has been awarded The Swedish Art Committee working grant, 2018–2020 and the Baertling Scholarship, 2015. Jesper Nyrén has made several public installations, among those the Karolinska University Hospital, Solna, and the subway station Gullmarsplan in Stockholm. His works are represented in public collections at Åbo Art Museum, Finland, Västerås Art Museum, Public Art Agency, Sweden and in private collections.

GALERIE FORSBLOM
Karlavägen 9, 114 24 Stockholm
galerieforsblom.com

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