Fredrik Åkum
Tear out pages/Tear of Jacqueline
27.09—26.10.19

Gallery Steinsland Berliner is proud to present Tear out pages/Tear of Jacqueline, a solo exhibition with new work by Swedish painter Fredrik Åkum.

Fredrik Åkum is a skilled and experienced painter with an oeuvre displaying dedicated efforts to remove himself and his paintings from a place of comfortable comprehension and expected results. A yearning to be surprised by his own work, to truly experience a work of art as an independent observer has caused Åkum to develop a complex methodological system which assures a certain margin of error for an otherwise precise artist.

An appreciation of printing techniques and a fascination of the inherent conclusiveness of the replicated image is central to his art. Åkum will repeatedly copy his own work, an arduous and lengthy process which gradually takes him further away from the primary painting. He likens this process to the natural glitches and inaccuracies that occur when printing by hand, a sequence of intended copies will rarely turn out identical. His abstract compositions are created by awkwardly crouching on the floor, effectively hindering not only movement but also obstructing a clear view of the canvas. Paint is thinned out with various mediums, making it difficult to control and prone to spontaneous seeping and trickling. It is within these restrictive circumstances that Åkum can experience the suspense of not fully being able to foresee the end result.

The two-part title Tear out pages/Tear of Jacqueline refers to integral makings of Fredrik Åkum’s perspective. Imagine two pages in a fanzine haphazardly bent or intentionally folded, creating an unexpected picture. This idea of seren- dipitous constellations acts as the basis for Åkum’s compo- sitions.

Jacqueline Roque was Picasso’s last wife. She is immortalized in the form of a 15 m sculpture located in Fredrik Åkum’s childhood home of Kristinehamn. One day when Åkum was painting in his studio he happened to place himself in a spot where he saw his own painting in the corner of his eye. A particular section of this painting reminded him of the sculpture by Picasso, a guilt-ridden reminder of a past too seldom revisited as well as a brief fulfillment of his wish for unpredictability.

Fredrik Åkum (b. 1987) lives and works in Gothenburg. He holds an MFA from Valand Academy (Gothenburg, SE).