Roland Persson @ Helsinki Contemporary - "Uninvited Guest" Exhibition

Roland Persson

Uninvited Guest

Helsinki Contemporary

3 - 26 October 2025

Helsinki Contemporary presents Swedish sculptor Roland Persson's third solo exhibition at the gallery titled Uninvited Guest.

Roland Persson is known for his surrealistic works based on hyper-realistic silicone casts of objects, animals, and plants. As an artist he explores the interface between consciousness and the subconscious, between humans and nature, and between the private and the public.

The works in this exhibition are partly built on Persson's childhood memory of his aunt's apartment where the furniture was covered with white sheets after the aunt moved to America. The eerie atmosphere of absence in the rooms of the home is conveyed in an installation where we see, among other things, goats walking on a bed. In the gallery, sheets are propped against the walls, resembling a theatre or film set. The pleated silicone, imitating white fabric, drapes, covers, and protects from view. In addition to goats, another animal roaming the quiet installation is the great cormorant, a bird widely regarded as a nuisance in the Nordic archipelago.

Persson's practice is about creating new worlds that strangely resemble reality. The aim of his works is to make the viewer uncertain about their observations. According to Persson, who is familiar with psychoanalysis and draws on it in his art, this uncertainty allows the viewer to liberate their own subconscious. Silicone is a contradictory material and it is well suited to depict the mystical opposites in Persson's art. As a material, it can reproduce details realistically—on the other hand, it is synthetic and "unnatural". The works entice yet can also appear repulsive, at once carnal and ethereal, strange and familiar, perhaps uncanny in psychoanalytic terms.

The exhibition also features drawings on wax-coated paper. As a technique, drawing appears very different from creating large installations, but there is a connection between the two: the drawings are often like abstract and instinctive instructions for the sculptures.

ROLAND PERSSON (b. 1963) graduated from the Umeå University Academy of Fine Arts in 1993 and has been exhibiting ever since. His work has been shown at eg. the Liverpool Biennial (2021), the Ostrobothnian Museum in Vaasa (2023), and Färgfabriken in Stockholm as well as Amos Rex and HAM Helsinki Art Museum in Helsinki (2024), to mention a few.

This year Roland Persson is nominated for one of the biggest art awards in the Nordic countries, Ars Fennica. His works will be on display in the nominees' group exhibition at HAM from October 24, 2025, to March 29, 2026.

HELSINKI CONTEMPORARY

Bulevardi 10, 00120 Helsinki

helsinkicontemporary.com

Gunnel Wåhlstrand @ Turku Art Museum, Finland

Gunnel Wåhlstrand 

Turku Art Museum 

Through 14 September 2025 

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND 

Photographer: Mikael Olsson 

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND 

Rose, 2020 

Ink-wash on paper, 125 x 154 cm

Private Collection

Photograph: Jean-Baptiste Béranger

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

Wave, 2015

Ink-wash on paper, 245 x 160 cm

Private Collection

Photograph: Per-Erik Adamsson

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

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. 

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

Mother Profile, 2009

Ink-wash on paper, 188,5  x 137,5 cm

Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm 

Photograph: Björn Larsson

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

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.

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

Långedrag, 2004

Ink-wash on paper, 209 x 157 cm / 192 x 140 cm 

Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm 

Photograph: Björn Larsson

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

The Desk, 2004 

Ink-wash on paper, 206 x 157  cm

Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation 

Maria Bonnier Dahlins Stiftelse 

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

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

turuntaidemuseo.fi

Gunnel Wahlstrand

Turku Art Museum , 6 June –14 September 2025

Martin Wickström @ Galerie Forsblom - "Tänd dina eldar" Exhibition

Martin Wickström

Tänd dina eldar

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki 

May 5 – June 1, 2025

Martin Wickström’s (b. 1957) art is situated at the intersection between past and present, private and collective. His kaleidoscopic imagery juxtaposes unexpected elements: arctic avens in timeless alpine scenery appear side by side with barrel fires in 1980s Harlem, and American Pop Art emblems are interspersed among wistful childhood memories of growing up in the safe arms of Sweden’s folkhemmet during the 1960s. Martin Wickström mixes disparate decades and geographies, intermixing images of the French Alps with scenes from the United States, Sweden and Kyoto. His paintings engage in close scrutiny of quotidian drama wherever it unfolds, whether in family dynamics or in the international political arena.

Martin Wickström combines a variety of elements in his work: documentary photography, everyday objects and emotional memories. He finds and highlights beauty in architecture and design. His paintings have a diary-like quality – they are like carefully assembled visual notebooks that reward the viewer with their depth and nuance. Their multidimensionality is also challenging; the non-linear narrative plays with various parallels and associations, hinting at a bigger picture behind everything. Wickström’s paintings are characterized by their photorealistic precision and rootedness in tangible reality, yet they also evoke the fleeting, fragmented nature of moments that have become obscured by unreliable memories.

Martin Wickström bases his paintings on photographs, collected images and digital experimentation with various combinations before he begins to paint. He draws inspiration from everyday life and personal experiences, from everything he sees, records and feels, and from everything that is happening around him in the world. His guiding motto is the text found on French road signs at the entrance of tunnels: “allumez vos feux,” or “turn on your lights,” which the artist poetically interprets as a call to action.

Martin Wickström studied at the Gerlesborg School of Fine Art and the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. He has exhibited widely around the world and his work is held in many prestigious collections, including Moderna Museet, EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art and the art museums of Gothenburg, Skövde and Norrköping.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

Peter Mohall @ Luce Gallery, Turin - "Landskap" Exhibition of Landscape Paintings

Peter Mohall: Landskap

Luce Gallery, Turin

March 21 – April 25, 2025

Luce Gallery presents Landskap, an exhibition of paintings by Swedish born, Norway based, painter PETER MOHALL. This is his fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.

As the Swedish lingual title implies, the exhibition thematic concern is with landscape painting. The coruscating landscapes of rural Scandinavian countryside captures the regional scenery, while the saturated imagery recalling the aesthetics of Post-impressionism, with embedded references to both regional painters like Helmer Osslund, Aleksi Gallen-Kallela and Willi Midelfart as well as idiomatic movements like Les Nabis, die Brücke, and Fauvism.

The specific material qualities of the traditional medium of choice, utilizing tempera grassa paint on jute canvas, along with a particular painting style, a sensitive brush handling and visual references, generates a distinct imagery that reveal a comprehension of the medium and it’s inherent art historical properties. Which is leading us to a tentative conclusion that the subject matter is subordinated by a conceptual inquiry into the medium.

The supporting evidence for this assumption comes in form of thick brush strokes sticked to the «window glass» of the illusionary window into the pictorial dimension. The brush strokes are «floating in the air» between us and the motif, causing our focus shift in and out between the pictorial dimension and the flat surface. The perceptual conflict destabilizes the narrative reading of the painting, leaving us with perceptual challenges searching for visual codes to decipher.

First thing we notice about the brush strokes are that they contain the colour index of the painting. Peter Mohall invites us into his artistic process by sharing the palette. A point of interest is the opportunity to study the change of optic values of a colour from isolation compared to inclusion within the context of surrounding colours in the motif.

An interesting insight about the process is that Peter Mohall has to calculate the numbers of colors to use in a painting in advance. Areas needs to be retained in order to properly attach the brush strokes directly onto the canvas. The brush strokes are often arranged as a grid, a note to the modernist method, or in alignment overlaying the motif.

Furthermore, the brush strokes are identical. Peter Mohall has developed a signature strategy utilizing cast brush strokes in an inquiry into a medium-specific investigation of the relationship between the painterly authentic and automation. First deployed in a formalistic setting on empty canvases, the cast brush strokes thematize the gesture alluding the fusion of two modernist strategies; the brush stroke as subject matter and repetition. Peter Mohall adapted the strategy using figuration as backdrops, innovating an imagery of complexity, multi-layered, with internal painterly discussions and perceptual challenges. A conflict between two image forms where traditional perception interacts with the implementation of modernist strategies.

PETER MOHALL (b. 1979, Löddeköpinge (SE), lives and works in Nesoddtangen (NO)) graduated from the Oslo National Academy of Fine Arts. He has exhibited throughout Europe, Asia and the United States, including solo shows with Luce Gallery, Turin, Nino Mier, Los Angeles, Koki Arts, Tokyo, Pablo’s Birthday, New York and QB Gallery Oslo. His work has been acquired by numerous collections such as Fondazione 107, Turin, Central Bank of Norway, Oslo; and JP Morgan Chase Collection among others, as well as public commissions in both Oslo and Drammen.

LUCE GALLERY

Largo Montebello, 40 - 10124 Torino

www.lucegallery.com

Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind Flowers @ MoMA, New York

Hilma af Klint 

What Stands Behind Flowers

MoMA, New York

May 11 - September 27, 2025

Hilma af Klint 

Tulipa sp. (Tulip) 

Sheet 35 from the portfolio Nature Studies. May 20, 1920 

Watercolor, pencil, ink, and metallic paint on paper, 

19 5/8 × 10 5/8 in. (49.8 × 27 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

Hilma af Klint 

Gagea lutea (Yellow Star-of-Bethlehem), 

Pulmonaria officinalis (Common Lungwort), 

Tussilago farfara (Coltsfoot), 

Draba verna (Common Whitlowgrass), 

Pulsatilla vulgaris (European Pasqueflower) 

Sheet 2 from the portfolio Nature Studies. April 24–30, 1919 

Watercolor, pencil, and ink on paper, 

19 5/8 × 10 9/16 in. (49.9 × 26.9 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

Hilma af Klint 

Convallaria majalis (Lily of the Valley), 

Geum rivale (Water Avens), 

Polygala vulgaris (Common Milkwort) 

Sheet 11 from the portfolio Nature Studies. June 10–11, 1919 

Watercolor, pencil, ink, and metallic paint on paper, 

19 5/8 × 10 5/8 in. (49.9 × 27 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

Hilma af Klint 

Luzula campestris (Field Woodrush), Viola hirta (Hairy Violet), 

Viola odorata (Sweet Violet), 

Chrysospleniumalternifolium 

(Alternate-Leaf Golden Saxifrage), 

Equisetumarvense (Field Horsetail), 

Caltha palustris (Marsh Marigold), 

Ranunculus ficaria (Fig Buttercup),  Carex sp. (Sedge) 

Sheet 4 from the portfolio Nature Studies. May 9–15, 1919  

Watercolor, pencil, and ink on paper, 

19 5/8 × 10 9/16 in. (49.9 × 26.9 cm). 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

The Museum of Modern Art presents an exhibition showcasing MoMA’s recent acquisition of Nature Studies, a portfolio of 46 botanical drawings by the Swedish artist HILMA AF KLINT (1862–1944), which will be on display for the first time. Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind Flowers explores af Klint’s engagement with the natural world. Created during the spring and summer of 1919 and 1920, the Nature Studies portfolio presents the wonders of Sweden’s flora and showcases the artist’s keen botanical eye. Hilma af Klint combines her renowned approach to abstraction with traditional botanical drawing, juxtaposing detailed renderings of plants discovered in her surroundings with enigmatic abstract diagrams. Examples include a sunflower paired with concentric circles, a narcissus crowned by a pinwheel of primary colors, and tree blossoms accompanied by checkerboards of dots and strokes. Through these forms, af Klint seeks to reveal, in her words, “what stands behind the flowers,” reflecting her belief that studying nature uncovers truths about the human condition. Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind Flowers is organized by Jodi Hauptman, The Richard Roth Senior Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, with Kolleen Ku, Curatorial Assistant, and Chloe White, Louise Bourgeois Fellow, Department of Drawings and Prints. Realized with the participation of the Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm.

The exhibition focuses on the years 1917 to 1922, contextualizing the MoMA portfolio and highlighting a pivotal shift in af Klint’s practice. In 1917, no longer satisfied with only receiving direction from spiritual guides, Hilma af Klint embarked on a path of self-study, culminating in the Nature Studies drawings. The exhibition opens with this new approach, seen in her adoption of an abstract diagrammatic vocabulary in works like the 1917 Atom series, one of many key loans from the Hilma af Klint Foundation in Stockholm. This section also highlights in landscapes and botanical drawing her ongoing dedication to observation. As Hilma af Klint noted, “First, I shall try to penetrate the flowers of the earth; use as a point of departure the plants of the earth.” The second section focuses on the Nature Studies, along with related notebooks that allow visitors to experience af Klint’s reflections on the plants she studied, as well as botanical source materials. The final section presents her ongoing interest in exploring the connection between nature and spirituality, but with a new method. In the 1922 series On the Viewing of Flowers and Trees, Hilma af Klint employs a wet-on-wet watercolor technique, using vibrant color to express the spiritual power of plants.

Hilma af Klint 

Helianthus annuus (Common Sunflower) 

Sheet 27 from the portfolio Nature Studies. September 3, 1919 

Watercolor, pencil, ink, and metallic paint on paper, 

19 3/4 × 10 9/16″ (50.2 × 26.8 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

Hilma af Klint

Prunus padus (European Bird Cherry), 

Prunus avium (Sweet Cherry), 

Prunus cerasus (Sour Cherry), 

Prunus domestica (European Plum) 

Sheet 7 from the portfolio Nature Studies. May 27–June 3, 1919 

Watercolor, pencil, ink, and metallic paint on paper, 

19 5/8 × 10 5/8 in. (49.9 × 27 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

Hilma af Klint

Tilia × europaea (Common Linden) 

Sheet 22 from the portfolio Nature Studies. July 29, 1919 

Watercolor, pencil, ink, and metallic paint on paper, 

19 5/8 × 10 5/8 in. (49.9 × 27 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund and 

gift of Jack Shear, 2022

“While we often think of artists of the early 20th century as focused on new technologies—and the hustle and bustle of modern life—for many, the natural world was a crucial touchstone. MoMA’s Nature Studies reveal af Klint as an artist uniquely attuned to nature. We hope that attunement—her demonstration of careful observation and discovery of all that stands behind the flowers—encourages our audience to look closely and see their own surroundings, whether here in the city or beyond, in new ways,” says Jodi Hauptman.

Hilma af Klint

Nos. 6–14b from the series Group 2. February 5–12, 1919 

Watercolor, graphite, and metallic paint on paper, 

14 3/16 × 19 11/16 in. (36 × 50 cm) 

Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm (HaK 448)

Hilma af Klint

No. 8 from The Atom Series. January 13, 1917 

Watercolor, graphite, and metallic paint on paper, 

10 5/8 × 9 13/16 in. (27 × 25 cm) 

Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm (HaK 360)

Hilma af Klint 

Birch from the series On the Viewing of Flowers and Trees. 1922 

Watercolor on paper, 6 11/16 × 9 13/16 in. (17 × 25 cm) 

Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm (HaK 639)

The exhibition reveals, for the first time, the extent of af Klint’s plant knowledge and the ways her botanical experience shaped her artistic vision. Through research for this exhibition, seven previously unknown drawings by Hilma af Klint of mushroom species, commissioned by the renowned Swedish mycologist M. A. Lindblad, were discovered in the archives at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. They are loaned to MoMA, and shown in the US for the first time, to demonstrate af Klint’s commitment to close observation of the natural world and her drawing within a scientific context. The discovery was made through the research collaboration of Dr. Lena Struwe, director of the Chrysler Herbarium at Rutgers University and professor at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, a contributor to the exhibition and its catalogue; and Dr. Johannes Lundberg, curator in the Department of Botany at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, who identified this previously unknown group of drawings. Further, as a crucial element of the exhibition’s research, MoMA associate conservator Laura Neufeld conducted the firstever technical analysis of af Klint’s methods and materials on paper.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue and a limited-edition facsimile. 

Cover of Hilma af Klint: 

What Stands Behind the Flowers 

Published by The Museum of Modern Art, 

New York, 2025

The lavishly illustrated catalogue, Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers, presents the 46 drawings alongside contextualizing artworks and translations of the artist’s previously unpublished writings. An overview essay by Jodi Hauptman explores af Klint’s portfolio and the circumstances of its creation, and essays by Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Laura Neufeld, and Lena Struwe unpack the imagery, materiality, and botanical knowledge of these works. 272 pages, 160 color illustrations. Hardcover, $55. ISBN: 978-1-63345-168-1. 

Hilma af Klint: Flora is a deluxe facsimile of the full portfolio, published in a limited edition of 500. Each of the 46 drawings are presented on its own sheet at full scale, and the collection is enclosed in a luxe clamshell case. $500. ISBN: 978-1-63345-169-8.

Both editions are published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and will be available at MoMA stores and online at store.moma.org.

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART - MoMA, NEW YORK

moma.org

Kjell Strandqvist @ Berg Gallery, Stockholm - "Mallar 1991" Exhibition

Kjell Strandqvist: Mallar 1991

Berg Gallery, Stockholm

16 January - 15 February, 2025

Kjell Strandqvist’s paintings often combine the defined with the undefined, frequently utilizing a distinct, simple form as a vessel for coloristic events. His colors possess a dense, imaginary relationship that is sometimes more felt than seen. In his first exhibition at Berg Gallery, he presents a series of paintings under the common title Mallar (’Templates’). The works were originally shown in 1991 at Galerie Aronowitsch in Stockholm, where Kjell Strandqvist exhibited on a regular basis between 1983 and 2009. Yet, these works possess a distinctly timeless quality. The compositions show softly defined rectangular fields in muted colors – like the hues of nature at twilight – surrounded by edges that have been left unpainted, revealing the white canvas.

Kjell Strandqvist describes the works in the exhibition as follows: 

”Stencils cut from copper printing paper, placed on a horizontal canvas and filled with color, then lifted off before the paint is fully dry. When diluted acrylic paint accumulates and dries uncontrollably, it creates islands dense with pigment – a kind of nature. The paint seeps beneath the stencil, deforming the otherwise strict configuration. Its simple geometry acquires an organic character through the behavior of the pigment. The formations of the painting sometimes extend to the outer edges of the square, leaving an uneven white margin. Certain combinations occasionally create asymmetric coloristic encounters. The slightly deformed appearances created by the stencils recalled some sort of essence, overgrown architecture, peculiar shapes.”

Kjell Strandqvist (b. 1944, Härnösand) lives and works in Stockholm. His artistic career spans more than five decades and includes a large number of solo and group exhibitions throughout Scandinavia and Europe. Previous solo exhibition venues include Galerie Aronowitsch, Stockholm (2009, 1997, 1994, 1992, 1985, etc.), Kungl. Konstakademien, Stockholm (2019, 2014, 2013, 2004), Galleri Mariann Ahnlund, Umeå (2007, 2001, 1992), Thielska Galleriet, Stockholm (2003, 1988), i8 Gallery, Reykjavik (1999) Centre Culturel Suédois, Paris (1984), and Galleri Olsson, Stockholm (1982). In addition to his artistic practice, Kjell Strandqvist served as a professor at The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm from 1986 to 1996. He has also been a board member of Moderna Museets Vänner, Maria Bonniers Dahlins Stiftelse, and The Academy of Fine Arts. From 1998 to 2006, he worked as a project leader at Statens Konstråd / Public Art Agency Sweden.

BERG GALLERY

Hudiksvallsgatan 8, 11330 Stockholm

www.berggallery.se

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

Peter Frie @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - "The View Belongs to Everyone" Exhibition

Peter Frie: The View Belongs to Everyone

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

February 23 – March 17, 2024

Peter Frie presents his latest small-scale oil paintings and bronze sculptures in his new exhibition. Peter Frie’s timeless landscapes have an experiential resonance to which everyone can relate. His canvases present nameless scenes that remind us of places we know or foreign lands we have visited, or they might equally represent landscapes within ourselves. They also possess a metaphorical universality that transcends the physical location.

Peter Frie paints only from memory, never by replicating real landscapes. Nevertheless, his works are rooted in the landscape tradition, particularly the Symbolist aesthetic of using landscapes to express abstract concepts such as mental states and memories, and the romantic tradition of imbuing scenery with a powerful emotive presence. The small size and the white frame enclosing the picture plane highlight the limits of experience, inviting us to picture the landscape that extends beyond the picture frame. The dark-hued sculptures are like three-dimensional negatives of the paintings or gateways that lead us deeper inside their mystical world.

Peter Frie is one of Sweden’s most renowned contemporary artists. He has exhibited widely across Europe and participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Asia. His work is found in museums such as Stockholm’s Moderna Museum and the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki. He is also represented in numerous private collections across Europe and the United States. Peter Frie won the Ars Fennica Award in 1998.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22 - 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

Jenny Carlsson Grip @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - "Day breaks" Exhibition

Jenny Carlsson Grip: Day breaks

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

February 23 – March 17, 2024

Jenny Carlsson Grip visits the forest every day, sometimes just to walk, observe, listen and be inspired, or sometimes to spend a longer time painting beneath a canopy of trees. All her paintings are rooted in the forest, and its presence is palpable in her art: it is easy to imagine how the tree trunks might feel against one’s skin or how the soft springiness of the soil might feel underfoot. Nature’s presence is simultaneously dirty, fragile and beautiful in her paintings. The trees, earth and sky exist in their own cyclic reality, with one season following another. Memories linger in the layers of soil, the windswept treetops, and the annual growth rings inside each tree trunk. The same memories are also imprinted upon Jenny Carlsson Grip’s canvases.

Jenny Carlsson Grip’s style of painting veers between brutal and romantic. The rawness of her technique is heightened by her intensely physical method: she applies the paint by taking turns with a brush, her hands or rags. Her color scale echoes the earthy tones of the soil, trees, water and sky. Her paintings might equally be described as hyper-realistic close-ups of soil, moss, and branches or as expressionistic studies of color. The result hovers somewhere in a borderland between nature's wild world and the painting's civilized domain.

Jenny Carlsson Grip (b. 1984) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts at Umeå University and she has exhibited at venues including Bonniers Kunsthalle and Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde in Stockholm, Karlskrona Kunsthalle and Malmö Kunsthalle. Her work is found in major Nordic art collections, including those of Aalto University, Västerbotten Museum, and Blekinge Museum. The artist lives and works in Kallinge, Sweden.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22 - 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

Just like in a mirror – portraits over five centuries @ Nationalmuseum Jamtli, Östersund

Just like in a mirror – portraits over five centuries

Nationalmuseum Jamtli, Östersund

Through 9 March 2025

David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl 

Self-portrait with allegories, 17th-century 

Photo: Anna Danielsson/Nationalmuseum 

Laila Prytz 

Birgit Nilsson (1918-2005), opera singer, 1964 

Oil on masonite

Photo: Linn Ahlgren/Nationalmuseum

Per Krafft d.y 

The Demoiselles Charlotte Jeanette and Anne Sofie Laurent, 1815 

Oil on canvas 

Photo: Erik Cornelius/Nationalmuseum

The exhibition Just like in a mirror – portraits over five centuries presents men, women and children who lived in or served Sweden from the 16th century to the present day. Not all the subjects were born in the country, but they all contributed in various ways to its history or cultural life. Some of the artists and subjects have a connection with Jämtland.

Duskily as in a mirror, people from past centuries and from our own times can be discerned in the portraits. The paintings, sculptures and photographs are not realistic depictions, but rather images of how the subject wishes to appear for eternity and how the artist chooses to interpret this. The artworks show different ideals of appearance and fashion, while also reflecting how notions of status, social identity and profession have changed over the centuries.

In 17th-century Sweden, the court painter David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl produced an allegorical portrait of himself in the company of symbolic figures personifying painting and creativity. In the 19th century, the idea of the unworldly bohemian emerged as an artistic ideal, represented here by Louise Breslau’s informal study of her fellow artist Ernst Josephson. Others, such as Ava Lagercrantz at the turn of the 20th century, emphasised their social status by posing in lavish clothes and elegant settings. In the present day, Marja Helander’s photograph of Britta Marakatt-Labba portrays the Sami artist outdoors amid the snow-covered landscape of northern Sweden.

To this day, official portraits of the Swedish royal family, especially those of reigning monarchs, follow the portrait traditions of the Renaissance. The subjects represent not only themselves, but also their office and the kingdom. A full-length standing portrait of Queen Kristina as a child shows her holding regalia and wearing a dress of the same cut as those worn by adult women of the time. The emergence of the middle class in the 19th century was reflected in the style of royal portraits. Bernhard Österman’s 1929 painting of King Gustav V, with its brilliant use of light and colour, is akin to the artist’s portraits of other well-to-do personages. In our time, Thron Ullberg and others have taken photographs of the present King both in formal stately poses and sitting in the forest.

Bernhard Österman 

Gustav V (1858-1950), King of Sweden 

Oil on canvas 

Photo: Per-Åke Persson/Nationalmuseum 

Marja Helander 

Britta Marakatt (born 1951), PhD h.c., 

Sámi textile artist, graphic artist, painter, married 

to reindeer owner Nils Johannes Labba, 2022. 

Photograph, digital print

Ida von Schulzenheim 

Pierre Louis Alexandre, called "Petterson", ca. 1880 

Oil on canvas 

Photo: Anna Danielsson/Nationalmuseum

Scholars and creative practitioners – writers, actors, singers – are well represented in portraiture. In the past, they were often portrayed with an appropriate attribute such as a book or a sheet of music. Nowadays, photographic portraits in particular tend to rely more on the subject being recognisable to viewers, as in Sanna Sjöswärd’s portrayal of the author Theodor Kallifatides. Other artists have moved away from more realistic depictions. Laila Prytz created her image of Birgit Nilsson from blocks of colour, nevertheless succeeding in capturing characteristic features of the opera singer’s appearance.

Groups less well represented in Nationalmuseum’s collections, especially among the older portraits, include the peasantry, servants and sports stars. Examples featured here include an 18th-century servant girl, painted by an unknown artist, and Johan Fredrik Höckert’s portrait of Såsser Kerstin Andersdotter. The Afro-Swedish dockworker Pierre Louis Alexandre had a side job as a model at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, where student Ida von Schulzenheim painted his portrait.

Just like in a mirror features around 100 portraits from the Nationalmuseum collections, including the Swedish National Portrait Gallery. Although painted works predominate, photography and sculpture are also represented. The portraits are not displayed in chronological order, but instead are grouped into themes such as family, cultural personalities and royalty. The exhibition not only focuses on portraiture as a major genre in art, but also presents a representative selection of works from Nationalmuseum’s collections, many of which have not been exhibited publicly for many years, if ever.

Exhibition curator: Eva-Lena Karlsson from Nationalmuseum

NATIONALMUSEUM JAMTLI

Museiplan 2, 831 52 Östersund, Sweden

www.nationalmuseum.se

www.jamtli.com

Susanne Johansson @ Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Jackson Hole, WY - A Certain Kind of Stillness

Susanne Johansson

A Certain Kind of Stillness

Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Jackson Hole, WY

November 3 - December 4, 2022

Tayloe Piggott Gallery presents A Certain Kind of Stillness, a solo exhibition of work by Swedish painter SUSANNE JOHANSSON. 

 

A Certain Kind of Stillness presents a selection of wooded paintings large and small that hold a mirror up to ourselves as viewers, circumventing our conscious reality and replacing each of us as temporal beings in nature. Each painting feels like a different dreamscape one can enter, exist within, and experience individually. 

 

Susanne Johansson, in her poetic voice, both in paint and with words, urges the viewer to find the stillness to enter this subconscious world of nature, where we are mere visitors in the realm of animals, insects, and trees:

I find a certain kind of stillness in the encounter with the overlooked and simple. In the things we rarely give a greater meaning I find a sense of home:

The backlight on a September day when I recognize the thistles and the field scabious in the fields of Uppland.

A microcosmos that is a stump of an oak tree. 

In the lowlands of Färnebofjärden a new synthesis of colors has been formed due to the light, the tree trunks, the earth and the leaves.

The many layers of time in a large oak tree that has become one with the surrounding landscape.

Behind everything and within all the knowledge that everything is temporary.

Among the dry leaves and grass, a quiet day in October, I sense a presence that is greater than our individual light.

The repeated theme of a solitary figure immersed –engulfed, even—in a woodland places Susanne Johansson apart from the human-centered landscape one finds throughout art history (e.g. Caspar David Friedrich, Edward Hopper, Camille Corot). That feeling of a figure hidden, nearly imperceptible but not quite one with the forest, references fond memories from the artist’s childhood in a rural community in northern Sweden. Growing up spending time in the woods was an experience of total freedom. Hunting with her father or exploring with her brother and sister, “I was never scared,” she says, of the wild animals in the landscape. “Yet somehow, we always felt as though we were visitors in someone else’s space. Like when we were walking in the forest picking berries, and the great grey owl came. You know, don’t come too close.” She explains further, “The landscape wasn’t mine. The land belonged to the red robin in the tree. It’s almost a celebration of that feeling of being close to something but not.” Johansson’s landscape is one you may enter, and explore, but perhaps not fully embody. 

Susanne Johansson

A Certain Kind of Stillness

Exhibition Catalogue, 2022

Published by Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Jackson Hole, Wyoming

 

SUSANNE JOHANSSON was born 1969 in Stråkanäs in the north of Sweden and now lives in Uppsala, Sweden. She was educated at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm (1992–1997). Selected exhibitions include:  Signs of Time, Turn Gallery, in the Parlour room, New York, USA (2022), Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm, Sweden (2022, 2015, 2012, 2009, 2007, 2004, 2002 & 1999), Fullersta Gård, Huddinge, Sweden (2019), Uppsala Art Museum, Sweden (2018), Trafo Kunsthal, Norway (2018), Galleri Ping-Pong, Malmö, Sweden (2018), Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm, Sweden, w. Johanna Karlsson and Petra Lindholm (2017), Hellvi Kännungs, Gotland, Sweden (2014), Volta NY, New York, US, Fred [London] (2011), Fred [London], UK (2010), Konsthallen/Kulturens Hus, Luleå, Sweden (2007), D’Ombra/The Shadow, Palazzo de Papesse, Centro Arte Contemporanea, Siena and MAN/Nuoro, Italy (2006-2007), Feigen Contemporary New York, US (2006), Galeria Monica De Cardenas, Milano, Italy (2005), Prague Biennale 2, Czech Republic (2005), M’ars Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia (2005).

TAYLOE PIGGOTT GALLERY

62 South Glenwood Street, Jackson Hole, WY 83001 

www.tayloepiggottgallery.com

Johanna Karlsson @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - Scenes and Notes

Johanna Karlsson: Scenes and Notes

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

August 19 – September 18, 2022

Swedish artist Johanna Karlsson (b. 1968), exhibiting in Finland now for the first time, builds dioramas, hidden inside which are startlingly detailed landscape ​​studies. The artist uses copper and silver wire, paper, old newspapers, egg cartons, textiles, pigments and plaster in her artworks. She solders, shapes and paints the works. The artworks demand time from the viewer, not only from the artist. The work process is slow and requires meticulous attention to detail. The viewing experience calls for the same dedication.

Johanna Karlsson’s works inhabit the middle ground between sculpture and painting. The artist is not so much interested in colors, though, focusing more on the sculpture and letting the materials speak. Karlsson’s landscapes are not verdant, as grey, white and brown are the predominant colors. Johanna Karlsson creates precise glimpses of nature while also introducing elements with cultural context. The result is a landscape where personal interpretation blends with natural science. The artist does not highlight particular symbols or thematic tales in her natural studies, instead leaving them to the broader story of all birth and death. The landscapes are rugged, but the artist points out that the trees are not dead. They are simply waiting.

Johanna Karlsson graduated from the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 1997. Karlsson’s work is found in collections such as the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sundsvall Museum in Sweden, and the Olbricht Collection in Germany. The artist lives and works in Stockholm.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

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Hilma af Klint @ David Zwirner, New York - Tree of Knowledge

Hilma af Klint: Tree of Knowledge

David Zwirner, New York

November 3 — December 18, 2021

Hilma af Klint

Tree of Knowledge, No. 1, 1913–1915

Courtesy David Zwirner

David Zwirner presents Tree of Knowledge, an exhibition of a rare set of Hilma af Klint’s groundbreaking 1913–1915 series of works on paper of the same title. This recently discovered group of eight watercolors is among the few works by the artist to exist outside of the holdings of the Hilma af Klint Foundation. This is a singular opportunity to experience the artist’s revelatory work, and follows the highly acclaimed 2018–2019 exhibition Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. 

Though little known during her lifetime and for decades after, Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) has come to be recognized as one of the most important and inventive artists of the twentieth century. When she began making vibrant, symbolic paintings as early as 1906, her work was radically unlike anything that had come before, and preceded the abstract work of artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Kazimir Malevich by several years. 

In contrast to those artists, who were more broadly credited for inventing abstraction, af Klint was not directly engaged in any avant-garde circles or art movements, coming to abstraction through her own artistic and personal evolution and development. Hilma Af Klint studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm for five years starting in 1882, where she gained a reputation as an accomplished painter of naturalistic portraits and landscapes. As with many of her peers, Hilma af Klint was profoundly interested in spiritual movements and philosophies, including the then emergent teachings of Theosophy and Anthroposophy as well as Buddhism and Rosicrucianism, among others. She became actively involved in examining the mysteries of the supernatural world, and her interest in visualizing the invisible forces beyond the physical realm led her to explore and represent spiritualist ideas and sentiments in her art. Together with a group of like-minded women who called themselves “The Five,” she held séances to communicate with the spiritual realm. In 1906, at the age of forty-four, af Klint accepted her major spiritual “commission”: over the next nine years she created a series of 193 visionary works that she titled Paintings for the Temple, the dynamic and bold imagery of which was conveyed to her through a medium. These elaborate and profound compositions constitute some of the earliest abstract paintings in the history of Western art. Hilma Af Klint showed her work to very few people during her lifetime, believing that society was not ready to understand the nature of her art and that it should be left to future generations.

While the majority of her groundbreaking work is held together in the collection of the Hilma af Klint Foundation, this exhibition features a rarely seen set of Hilma af Klint’s Tree of Knowledge series, which the artist created in 1913 and 1915 with renewed focus after her four-year hiatus after completing ambitious mediumistic paintings mentioned above. This series reflects her interest in distilling her iconography and in further articulating the spiritualist ideas and philosophies that she was engaged with. As Åke Fant notes, “All of the works in this series feature a tree with a heart-shaped crown. A circle surrounds the tree trunk. All eight paintings in this series feature variations on this theme. We are dealing with a process, here, that goes from innocence and balance to a complex bifurcation into male and female, to the Fall from Grace and the conception of a child.” [1] These complex, dynamic compositions mix biblical references to Genesis with esoteric iconography and vivid colors and motifs. The undulous, organic forms recall the stylings of art nouveau with an almost taxonomic attention to detail, resulting in fully formed visual allegories about the circle of life and death, darkness and light, spirit and matter, and being and becoming.

In the early 1920s, Hilma af Klint gave the set of watercolors as a gift to Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the spiritual and philosophical movement known as Anthroposophy, which influenced her. Around 1927, the works came into the possession of Albert Steffen, who became president of the Anthroposophical Society after Steiner’s death in 1925. It was not known that af Klint had made two versions of the Tree of Knowledge suite (the other is in the holdings of the af Klint Foundation) until the recent rediscovery of this set in the Albert Steffen Stiftung, Dornach, Switzerland. It is currently owned by a private collector. 

On the occasion of the exhibition, David Zwirner Books publishes a fully illustrated catalogue around this body of work with a newly commissioned essay by celebrated af Klint scholar Julia Voss, whose comprehensively researched Hilma af Klint, a Biography is forthcoming from The University of Chicago Press in September 2022 (the bestselling German edition was published in 2020 by S. Fischer). Also forthcoming by David Zwirner Books in 2022 is The Five Lives of Hilma af Klint, a graphic novel by Phillipp Deines with a foreword by Julia Voss that illustrates key moments in the artist’s life. 

Accompanying this exhibition, David Zwirner Online presents an Exceptional Works online viewing room exploring the history behind this remarkable set of watercolor works on paper.

HILMA AF KLINT was born in Solna, outside Stockholm in 1862, and studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1882 to 1888. 

Due to her request not to show her work until decades after her death, her abstract work remained largely unseen for many years. The beginning of Hilma af Klint’s broader international recognition came in 1986 in the group exhibition The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890–1945 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The exhibition traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, Netherlands, both in 1987.

Solo exhibitions of the artist’s work have been presented at numerous institutions including P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens, New York (1989); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1989; traveled to various venues in Scandinavia until 1991; also in 2005–2006); Albertina, Vienna (1991–1992; traveled to Kulturhaus der Stadt Graz, Austria, 1992; Museum Moderner Kunst, Passau, Germany, 1992); The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2004–2005); Camden Arts Centre, London (2006); and the Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem, Netherlands (2010). In 2013 to 2016, a major traveling exhibition of her work took place at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Museo Picasso, Málaga, Spain; and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark, among other venues. Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen was presented at the Serpentine Galleries, London, in 2016, and Hilma af Klint: Possible Worlds was on view at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo in 2018. In 2018 to 2019, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, presented Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, the first retrospective exhibition of the artist in North America. The exhibition attracted over 600,000 visitors, making it the most popular show in the museum’s history. Hilma af Klint: Artist, Researcher, Medium, an exhibition featuring over 200 works by the artist, was featured at Moderna Museet, Malmö, in 2020 to 2021. From December 4, 2021, to March 27, 2022, Hilma af Klint: The Secret Paintings will be on view at City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand. 

Several of Hilma af Klint’s works are included in current group exhibitions, such as The Art of Society, 1900–1945, the inaugural collection presentation at the newly restored Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, which opened on August 22, 2021, and will be on long-term view until July 2, 2023. Her work is part of Women in Abstraction at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (October 22, 2021 - February 27, 2022); the show was previously on view at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, in 2021. 

Other notable group exhibitions featuring works by the artist include Beyond Belief: Modern Art and the Religious Imagination, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (1998); Traces du Sacré, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2008; traveled to Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2008–2009); Il Palazzo Enciclopedico, 55th Venice Biennale (2013); The Keeper, New Museum, New York (2016); Intuition, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice (2017); A New Age: The Spiritual in Art, Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2019–2020); and Yael Davids: A Daily Practice, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2020).

[1] Åke Fant, “Phase Two: The W Series, or ‘The Tree of Knowledge,’” in Hilma af Klint: Occult Painter and Abstract Pioneer (Stockholm: Bokförlaget Stolpe, 2021), p. 64.

DAVID ZWIRNER

34 East 69th Street, New York, NY

www.davidzwirner.com

Anita Naukkarinen @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - Nodes

Anita Naukkarinen: Nodes

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki 

Through 21 November 2021

The title of ANITA NAUKKARINEN’s (b.1986) new exhibition, Nodes, carries numerous meanings. It can refer to a place where something begins, for instance, the place where a leaf is attached to a stem or a branch to a tree trunk. Anita Naukkarinen’s paintings study the various nodes that connect us to the environment. The artist has stated that we have reached a turning point calling for the urgent redefinition of the relationship between humans and the natural world. Anita Naukkarinen feels it is important for us to reflect on how our feelings of separateness from the external world are formed on a subjective level. What kind of mechanisms creates a sense of separateness or oneness between us, and the world around us? 

Anita Naukkarinen’s plant-themed paintings have the wispy quality of watercolors, but they are painted in oils. They possess a quiet restfulness, as a soft sigh breathed upon the canvas, the ethereal treatment of form being accompanied by a luminous palette of pastels. Focusing purely on the essentials, Anita Naukkarinen strips away all extraneous elements – sometimes, a soft touch has greater power, and sensitivity calls for great courage. Although her latest paintings are plant-themed, the artist has said that the underlying philosophical idea relates to more than just the botanical world. Nodes define the place or spot where lines and systems intersect. Anita Naukkarinen regards painting as an act of intimacy and presence, a form of reaching out beyond oneself. Painting is a way of expressing one’s interconnectedness with the world. 

Anita Naukkarinen studied at the Fine Arts Academy of Finland, and her works are found in numerous private collections. The artist is based in Helsinki.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

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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

Johannes Hägglund @ Galerie Forsblom, Stockholm - Happy Without You

Johannes Hägglund: Happy Without You

Galerie Forsblom Stockholm

9 November – 21 December, 2018

Johannes Hägglund works with abstract painting in which texture and composition have a clear presence. The paintings are based on an organic construction in which form and color take precedence over the selected motif. He approaches painting as a process, in which he first sketches with ink on paper and then transfers colors and patterns to the canvas. The challenge lies in creating the same feel on canvas as on paper. Brush strokes have powerful energy and movement, and the pattern must continue in a repetition beyond the canvas frame. References to various ornaments and decorations recur, along with a love of gingerbread trim, pastels, and Basset’s Allsorts wine gums.

Color composition has deep significance in Johannes Hägglund’s work. Primary and complementary colors intermingle with one another and common shapes such as ovals, circles, rhombuses and squares are depicted, but without perfectionism. Spatters of color are permitted to remain; childlike elements and the artist himself become part of the work. Nothing should be too perfect or corrected. In one painting, a circle is unexpectedly transformed through the addition of two straight lines and one curved one: Johannes Hägglund recreates the smiley face and elevates its meaning. Sometimes the shapes are intentionally cut in half, forming a type of punctum. It chafes a little bit, which is entirely the point.

JOHANNES HAGGLUND (b. 1993) studied at the Gerlesborg School in Stockholm. After completing his bachelor degree he entered the Master Programme in Fine Arts at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, which will be completed in 2020. His work has been shown at the bachelor degree exhibition at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in 2018 and at Liljevalchs Spring exhibition 2017 in Stockholm. The exhibition at Galerie Forsblom is his first solo presentation.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Karlavägen 9, 114 24 Stockholm

www.galerieforsblom.com