Ylva Carlgren
CHART Art Fair 2026
27.08—30.08.26

Gallery Steinsland Berliner returns to CHART Art Fair with a solo presentation of new works by Swedish artist Ylva Carlgren.

 

Ylva Carlgren is known for her masterfully controlled watercolour paintings, in which light and shadow unfold through subtle gradients and geometric abstractions. Following a series of international exhibitions, this presentation marks the artist’s first solo exhibition in Denmark.

 

Technique and materiality are at the core of Carlgren’s practice. Challenging the expected fluidity and bleeding quality of watercolour, she has instead developed a method of containment that relies on a deep understanding of the medium and its behaviour. Countless layers of colour are meticulously built up to create gradients across the paper, leaving no margin for error; once the paint is applied there is no going back without starting again. Embracing this self-imposed challenge, Carlgren explains the act of painting with watercolour as “a bit like playing chess”, where every move must be anticipated. What appears to the viewer as serene and immaculate is, in its making, a precarious process.

 

On view in Booth 22 at Charlottenborg is a new suite of works in a grounded palette of blue, green, red and brown. Through calculated preservation of the paper’s underlying whiteness, light floods, radiates and pulses throughout the paintings.

 

Carlgren’s works are, in many ways, an exercise in illusion: what seems effortless is in fact highly exacting. The precise points of contact between brush and paper can at times be difficult to discern, creating a sense of uncertainty around how the paintings have come into being. Carlgren deliberately dwells in a space beyond recognition, exploring the tension inherent in painting ´nothing´. Rather than representation, she engages with perception and spatiality, creating works of remarkable depth and presence.

 

Ylva Carlgren (b. 1984, SE) lives and works in Stockholm. She received her MFA from Valand Academy (Gothenburg, SE) in 2012. She has exhibited extensively in Sweden, as well as in Germany, France, Japan and China. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Axel Theofron Sandberg’s Watercolor Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in 2025.