Ylva Carlgren
Repetitions and Reversals
23.08—21.09.24
Gallery Steinsland Berliner is pleased to present Repetitions and Reversals, an exhibition by Swedish artist Ylva Carlgren. This marks the artist’s fifth exhibition since her initial presentation at the gallery ten years ago. During the past decade she has developed her distinctive, minimalist style which has emerged through a consistent exploration of the possibilities and limitations pertaining to the medium of watercolor.
The exhibition includes a series of works which have materialized between March and August of this year. They are the result of new developments within her painting practice where paint is repeatedly applied and brushed off as opposed to being added. The, within Carlgrens parctice, elemental question of how to paint ”nothing” has here been tackled from another direction as the image emerges through elimination. Where she has previously aspired for perfection and to hide the presence of the hand, the paint strokes have now been allowed to clearly stand out and have rather become a way to accentuate closeness and distance in the images’ undefined spatiality. The absent, which in her earlier works could be interpreted as openings, has now taken on physical form and the characteristic light which has been a staple of her work appears with a new sort of materiality.
An important source of inspiration for this new direction in her painting has been the Japanese painter Toko Shinoda whose work demonstrated a meeting of traditional Japanese calligraphy and abstract expressionism. A common denominator between the two is the search for a type of painting with its own concrete and real presence, something that depicts nothing but itself.
Ylva Carlgren (b. 1984, SE) lives and works in Stockholm. She holds a BFA and MFA from Valand Academy in Gothenburg.