Erla S. Haraldsdóttir, Emil Holmer, Maria Högbacke & Pontus Raud

COMPOSING REALITY

23 November - 02 December 2018

INVITED by TOBIAS STERNBERG

Isn’t painting the art form with the least rules or restrictions remaining? One can choose to paint pictures of the real or the imaginary, to paint abstract shapes or not even shapes, to paint those for their own sake or merely as a means to explore process or materiality, relationship or meaning, or simply paint itself. Or not even paint, but instead use the entire gravitational mass of everything said and done within painting as a counterweight of reference - to pull something out of or bounce against, and thus try to contribute to the discourse. One can paint dead-serious, whimsical, cynical or with compassion, and achieve equally grand or unsuccessful positions.

One can give up on painting since everything is already done, or throw oneself fully into it, since the sea of possibilities is vaster in painting than anywhere else. Composing Reality places four very different but equally confident painters in a room of opportunity and risk, balancing and bouncing off each other, and offering you as a visitor the chance to compare and consider, either by looking straight at their paintings, or at how they reflect in the painterly style of the others. All four stem from Sweden or have been heavily invested in that country, but have gathered their educations and inspirations from all over the art world. Erla S. Haraldsdóttir is a prolific Icelandic painter, who taught at the Umeå Academy and has exhibited widely in Sweden. To overcome the problem of endless choice in painting, she often works according to rules freely taken from friends or colleagues. These restraints liberate her from having to get stuck in the grand questions of what is meaningful to paint, and instead spurs her on to engage in the physical activity itself. Pontus Raud paints to explore the implications of viewing the world as a causal arena, where things make sense. If we are to believe that there is any necessity to the things happening around us, we must also assume a meaningful self, and a world full of measurable differences with inumerable relationships.

This creative force of separation can be clearly seen in his latest series of small oil pastels, where the same motif is often repeated with variation, emphasising the relationships within the subject. In Maria Högbackes paintings, the sensory and perception is recurring material. She has a fascination with colour and its link to emotions and memory. Her image making is concerned with language and communication, intertwined with itself and the external. The raw, almost primitive seeming abstract paintings of Emil Holmer are the meticulously planned result of drawn and collaged studies. As a painter, he is highly aware of composition, and uses his recurring elements and forms in a very knowing way. He uses mechanical tools like copy machines and silkscreen in order to find the necessary distance to let the paintings happen without forcing a form on them. His work is about painting in a postmodern age, but taking off at the concept of abstraction.

Composing Reality is part of a series of exhibitions mapping the self-organized art scene in Sweden, initiated by HilbertRaum member Tobias Sternberg, a Swedish artist living in Berlin.