Andreas Erikksonn - Coincidental Mapping @ Stephen Friedman Gallery

ANDREAS ERIKSSON - COINCIDENTAL MAPPING
27 April 2013 - 25 May 2013

Stephen Friedman Gallery is delighted to announce its first exhibition of work by Andreas Eriksson.
Born in 1975, this is the Swedish artist's first solo exhibition in the UK and follows his lauded presentation for the Nordic Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale. Eriksson's acutely atmospheric paintings, tapestries, sculptures and photographs relate to his daily life and the natural surroundings of his native Scandinavia. This body of work sits somewhere between abstraction and figuration, creating an enigmatic window to the outside world that feels at once familiar and mysterious.

Inspired by the Romantic Nordic tradition, Eriksson's work also alludes to but remains separate from what historian Robert Rosenblum called the ‘Northern Romantic tradition', a line that started with Caspar David Friedrich and extends to Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and onto Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko. However, unlike these artists, Eriksson does not refer to his relationship to nature as religious yet his work conveys the same calm, atmospheric and harmonic qualities.

Eriksson's output reflects a sense of the isolation of nature, a factor of Eriksson's everyday life as his studio is located deep in Medelplana in the Swedish countryside. Eriksson uses these natural surroundings, as experienced on his daily walks, as the source for the work. He does not merely map this landscape but, experimenting with formalism and material, impresses on the viewer his visual and emotional experience of these everyday encounters.

The exhibition at Stephen Friedman Gallery will include a group of new painting, ranging from the intimate to the epic in scale. Eriksson's paintings continue the exploration of his reactions to the perception and experience of the outside world. The gestural, textured forms, layering and distinct brushwork convey both his feelings and emotions when encountering nature, allowing the work to dwell between these real and imagined places. Complementing these paintings will be a group of new tapestries; densely packed woven landscapes rich in both texture and colour. The works appear both as patchwork landscapes seen from above and magnified details of organic form and texture; an intimate personal encounter with nature and expansive vista at the same time. These intricate tapestries rely on the dominance of vertical and horizontal lines in parallel and the reductive use of colour that is also a feature of his paintings.

The exhibition ‘Coincidental Mapping' provokes both the sensual and the conceptual, expanding a fleeting observation and an overlooked detail, whilst asking us to pause, consider and reflect. The same properties that are important in the artist's experience of nature remain integral to his work.

The exhibition runs from 27 April to 25 May 2013 in our No. 11 Old Burlington Street gallery.

Mamma Andersson - Gooseberry @ Stephen Friedman Gallery

MAMMA ANDERSSON - GOOSEBERRY
27 April 2013 - 25 May 2013

Stephen Friedman Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition of new paintings by established Swedish artist Mamma Andersson.

This is the artist's fourth solo exhibition at the gallery and follows highly acclaimed survey shows at Moderna Museet, Sweden; Camden Arts Centre, UK and Aspen Art Museum, USA.

Born in 1962, Andersson paints from her subconscious, creating complex compositions that bring together a variety of sources including Nordic figurative painting, folk art, film imagery and her personal history. This exhibition shows the development of Andersson's recognisable painterly style in sensuous new paintings populated by ghostly figures amid dreamlike interiors and seemingly calm vistas.

The title of the exhibition, ‘Gooseberry', refers to the bittersweet fruit: its complex taste bound by its prickly and yet beautiful translucent exterior. It also draws to mind the English expression ‘to play gooseberry' whereby someone feels alienated, observing a scene but not being a part of it. Such intertwining and hidden analogies resonate strongly with Andersson who delights in hinted and disjointed narratives. Her paintings invite our reading through their enticing familiarity, and yet deny a specific storyline, much like disparate film stills suspended in time. The viewer becomes an outside voyeur, drawn in to untangle the artist's vision.

Andersson takes a collagist approach to her source imagery, drawing from both personal and public spheres. In two complimentary paintings entitled 'Hello' and ‘Goodbye', Andersson uses a found image of the interior of a burgled clock shop, taken from a photograph of the crime scene. Reflected onto each canvas, akin to a Rorschach ink blot, we see in ‘Hello' the artist's grandfather approaching us and in its counterpart her mother is walking away. Andersson states: 'On one side this has come to be a very personal piece, but at the same time it is very general'.

During her painting process Andersson's technique changes from meticulous detail to gestural abstraction, as loose washes give way to stark lines, thick impasto and graphic figuration. Inspired by Japanese print-making, she uses oil on board to layer textures and in this exhibition uses broad applications of dark paint. This is seen particularly in ‘Family Ties' where a group of otherworldly, brooding figures are joined together in a haunting circle dance. Alternating between sparse and concentrated brushstrokes, Andersson conjures up emotive scenarios that speak to the human condition.

Hallucinatory and enigmatic, the paintings in ‘Gooseberry' present the artist's distinct and personal visual language imbued with a sense of mystery and magic.

The exhibition runs from 27 April to 25 May 2013 in our 25-28 Old Burlington Street gallery.

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