Andreas Eriksson (B. 1975 in Björsäter, Sweden) is one of the most acclaimed Swedish artists in his generation. For more than two decades, he has been occupied with painting, both as a technique and theme. He paints, but also uses other expressions to explore the painterly. Many connect his work to a Northern European Romantic painting tradition - his imagery is often derived from the nature surrounding Kinnekulle by Lake Vänern in Västergötland in Sweden, where he has his studio - but equally as often, the artworks come to being as a manifestation of an idea. The exhibition at Bonniers Konsthall presents works from the last ten years, spanning his entire ouevre with painting, photography, sculpture, film and textile. But it also contains new works related to the gallery’s architecture and surrounding urban environment. In a new piece especially made for the exhibition, Andreas Eriksson has used the winter view from the gallery overlooking the train tracks as a model for three fabrics in damask, translating the snowy cityscape to the weaving technique that dates back to the 16th century, with white on white relief effects.
Bonniers Konsthall first exhibited Andreas Eriksson’s work in Life Forms in 2009, one of our first group exhibitions that, through contemporary art, sought traces of the American artist Robert Smithson’s thoughts on a greater geological time outside of mankind’s quickly ticking clock. The cosmos, the earth and the minerals’ slow clockwork still ticks on in Andreas Eriksson’s work. In his paintings Eriksson builds up structures using blocks, layers and brushstrokes of colour that could be seen as landscapes, soil strata, moss fibres, leaf-cell structures, or simply after-images on the retina from looking at blinding-white snow.
