andreas eriksson - of stones and lakes

Das sagt der/die Veranstalter:in:

of stones and lakes, Andreas Eriksson’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery, sees the artist further develop his approach to depicting environments, shifting his focus from the landscape’s vast expanse and narrowing his gaze to its minutiae. The pinpointed perspective of these works on paper, inspired by Japanese rock gardens and the natural world that envelops his studio on Sweden’s Lake Vänern, reaches past the scope of his chosen motifs and extends to the practical methods employed. Here he supplants bold, canvas-filling fields of acrylic or oil with spare, intimate applications of ink, graphite, watercolor and pastel.

Eriksson’s body of paintings, weavings, drawings, prints and sculptures stands both as a tribute to organic phenomena and an exploration of their infinite intricacies. Each canvas, tapestry or sheet is a transmission of the indelible impressions left by his source - their subjects reverential records of life itself, and of the forces that lend it shape. His delicate layers of media come to parallel the structure of existence, and reflect an understanding of it born from dedicated observation. Dichotomies and dualities become central to his engagement, with the abstract and the figurative, the weighted and the weightless, the internal and the external, the vivid and the obscure, or the illusive and the real occupying equal space in his tact and its manifestations.

The works that comprise of stones and lakes grow from Eriksson’s keen sense of attunement, honed in an artistic practice that derives its strength from subtle shifts. Considered use of material becomes meditative, with intuitive markmaking standing at the union of gestures calculated and extemporaneous. His images - their linked streaks, staccato dashes or fluid linework - link his own physical setting with rock gardens’ to-scale approximations of nature’s core. The gardens’ distilled, self-contained representations of the world beyond, influenced by the clarity of early landscape painting, find analog in Eriksson’s own approach, itself characterized by sensitive regard for his surroundings and their interpretation. Compositions in compressed perspective deconstruct and reconstitute this mode, picturing stones standing solitarily or in dialogue: the mountains, ridges or pathways of dry gardens in their elemental states. Eriksson’s organic contours possess an instinctual balance, with each image paying homage to the eternal fortitude of their protagonists. Delineating his subjects decisively, Eriksson creates windows that frame not only their form, but their essence, harnessing the ever-transforming phenomena that define them.

Andreas Eriksson (b. 1975) has been the subject of international solo exhibitions, including those at Lillehammer Art Museum, Lillehammer (2024); Thielska galleriet, Stockholm (2023); Skissernas Museum, Lund (2021); Nordiska Akvarellmuseet, Skärhamn (2020); Cahiers d’Art, Paris (2020); Braunsfelder, Cologne (2019); Kunstforum Baloise, Basel (2015); Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2014); Trondheim kunstmuseum, Trondheim (2014); Centre PasquArt, Biel (2014); Reykjavík Art Museum, Reykjavík (2014); and mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna (2008). Eriksson was selected to participate in the third Jeju Biennale in 2022, the 30th Bienal de São Paulo in 2012 and the 54th  Venice Biennale’s Nordic Pavilion in 2011 representing Sweden. Eriksson lives and works in Medelplana, Sweden.