40th Anniversary Jubilee

Linnea Carlsson (CV)

Linnea Carlsson graduated from the Malmö Art Academy in 2008 and lives in Malmö. Her sculptural works often encapsulate a personal reflection on societal and psychological subjects, but are simultaneously a commentary on the, often traditional, tools with which they are made. In the artisanal work, the artistic expression touches upon questions about work, production, material and the utilization of natural resources as well as human resources. Sculpture Without Organs is a reflection of the European subject, from this perspective.

Sculpture Without Organs (close-up); bronze, hair and fabric, wooden base, 120 cm, 2014

Emil Z Ekberg (CV)

In his art, Emil Z. Ekberg explores and stretches the boundaries between drawing, film, computer games and reality. With a focus on post apocalyptic themes that we often recognize as genre forming within the worlds of film and computer games, Ekberg does not only challenge drawing as the traditional medium that it is, but takes it a step further. In digital works and collages made from drawings scenes created with a mix of fictitious and realistic elements are imitated. The relationship between the cinematic image and the drawn image is deconstructed and at the same time put into question as the border between the realistic and the unreal becomes ever more diffused.

As part of the 40th anniversary jubilee exhibit at Galleri Thomas Wallner, Ekberg will be showing two of his drawing collages; Each of Us, is Finally, Alone and Misbegotten Paradise. Ekberg completed his studies at Malmö Konsthögskola in 2011, and lives and works at Bösmöllan, outside of Lund.

Each of Us, is Finally, Alone (close-up), graphite drawing, paper collage; 100 cm x 220 cm

Johanna Fjaestad (CV)

I work primarily with painting. I am interested by materiality in my medium and by how a painting is not only an image, but also paint. On the canvas, I look for a circumstance in which the fantastic and the alienating coexist in balance side by side, simultaneously expressing emptiness and promises of fulfillment. In my painting, I work within a sphere coloured by a dreamlike atmosphere, fiction and a certain measure of escapism, inspired by personal travels, nature, literature, other art and collective memories of places far away from home and what is (and possibly isn’t) found there.

Anger III, oil on canvas, 49 cm x 35 cm, 2013

Clara Gesang-Gottowt (CV)

A certain animosity toward established knowledge drives me to let painting remain an experiment. Through a process where chance and control interact, I search in every painting for something new. Brushes, towels, solvent, squeegees, fingers. Addition and substraction of paint. A series of attempts, where the one action leads to the next. I am a time traveler in the past, the future and the present. An archeologist digging for new discoveries in my subconscious. Seeking something that I will only know what it is when I first see it. But no discovery is complete. There are always possible alternatives. Each new painting is a possible alternative to the previous one. In that way, the paintings become just as much about the gaps between them as they are about themselves.

Clara Gesang-Gottowt, Stockholm, July 2014

Untitled, oil on canvas, 76 cm x 56 cm, 2014

Ellisif Hals (CV)

I make collages based on my own drypoint etchings. I engrave patterns in a copper plate and press it in a series with various colours. Then, I layer the etchings, cut, reorganize and glue them in order to create new fragmented and complex entities. I find the ideas in historical, archeological and geographical contexts, but, even so, the medium and the technique characterize and drive much of my process. I try to create images with multiple layers, in a visual, physical and contextual sense.

Horn 2, drypoint etching collage, 30 cm x 32.5 cm, 2014

Tomas Lundgren (CV)

Lundgren explores and sheds light on parts of the past in works that originate in the archival, while being guided into a tradition of portrait painting. The face and the body stand in focus and Lundgren’s interest lies in how man has been represented, categorized and been valued in the realms of art and science.

Portrait painting is a meeting between the portrayer and the portrayed, where the perspective shifts between the two. The same duality occurs between the viewer and the Other, the depicted. The anthropomorphic features make it so that one directly relates to the portrait while at the same time becoming acutely aware that one’s gaze meets a static image, not a mirror. What is seen is a distortion of reality but even the image itself is deceptive. The portrayed has left only traces, and that which remains meanders through the painting, via the photograph and the archive.

Migration I, Oil on canvas, 180 cm x 145 cm, 2014

Ami Norda (CV)

Painted stories about something that has happened or has yet to happen, and about when life is so large that it’s hard to fit.
An artwork should feel like someone’s presence in the room.

I often work using my own photographs as a starting point. It begins with pictures that I see stories in. Somewhere in between the story itself, the associations I conjure, the form and the colour, I find myself in a completed painting. For me, working with a motif is like working with a cell that has a clear before and after. I let the picture become a field of colour of varying intensity, either letting the colour fields spread themselves out over large surfaces or letting them become a tangle of small details: an attempt to free the image from the memories it holds and feelings it evokes for me, to open it up and allow it to take on a universal significance.

I was born in Gothenburg in 1978 and, aside from some years in London and Paris, have since continued to call it my hometown. I have previously studied film and have worked with costume and film photography within film and theatre.

Ami Norda, July 2014

De lågande fälten, acrylic on mdf, 30 cm x 30 cm

Pauliina Pietilä (CV)

I work with oil painting and find my motifs during my nighttime walks in different cities, such as Istanbul, Berlin and Malmö. I peek into closed buildings, take a stroll though the dark side streets or follow an enthralling light I see in the distance. Most times, I cannot quite explain what pulls me in. It is a combination of many different circumstances that happen to be right just at that moment, a perfect place and even more importantly - a perfect moment.

I work with photography as a type of sketch or note before my resolved work. I photograph in the evening when the contrasts between lights and shadows are the strongest. I capture the exact moment that I find myself in when I am there with my camera, then expanding this short moment to months of painting in my studio.

Blomsteraffären, oil on canvas, 77 cm x 107 cm, 2014

Disa Rytt (CV)

My work is an investigation of the premises of painting: medium, light, time and space. I am interested in the way the art of painting appears to and changes in relation to the viewer and to the room in which it is displayed.
The starting point of my work is the intersection in which the image meets gaze and space. I investigate how the differences between them manifest themselves and relate to the visuality of the art of painting. Here, I am interested in the role of mimicry as it relates to the making visible of the difference between the portrayal of - and that which is portrayed in the painting. In the space created between them, my experience is that the paintings become self-reflective. They look within themselves and make themeslves conscious, as though they contained a second presence.
In relating to the walls that are not them, and at the same time appropriating them though their own premises, I feel as though the paintings consolidate themselves and their visuality as if through a paradoxical negation.

Disa Rytt
 

Ausser Sich 1 (close-up), acrylics and gezzo on scrim, three panels each 45 x 210 cm

Sara Wallgren (CV)

Sara Wallgren’s artistic practice revolves around a fascination for codes, communication, traces and time. The core of her practice is the use of drawing and sound. She often works with phenomenon of communication and translation of one condition to another. Lately her focus has been on translation of sound to image, and vice versa. With a close relation to synesthesia she tries to challenge the notion of the state of objects or phenomenons through providing an alternative perspective on perception. Recurring in her artworks is also the close relation she has to the physical properties of the material she works with. Sara graduated with an MFA from Malmö Art Academy 2010 and lives and works in Hammenhög, Sweden.

Tonteckningar in D, A and Hm are 3 graphite drawings on canvas. The gray monochromatic nuance of the dots that cover the drawing’s surface is an attempt to translate a tone to an image. The tones, or chords that serve as backgrounds for the drawings D, A and Hm belong to Johann Pachellbell’s Canon in D. A baroque composition whose musical harmony has fascinated mathematicians, musicians and listeners, and has been perceived as a perfect harmony. The combination of the chords has been used diligently in both classical and modern pop music since Canon in D was written (commonly used as a wedding march by Johann Sebastian Bach). Through a highly subjective translation of the tone to how the artist believes it manifests itself visually, a physical transcription of the universal harmony between the tones in Canon in D is created.

Tonteckningar in D, A and Hm (close-up), graphite drawings on canvas; 130cm x 110 cm 180 cm x 140 cm and 180 cm x 140 cm, 2013