Press Release

Composing Reality

Isn’t painting the art form with the least rules or restrictions remaining? One can choose to paint

pictures of the real or the imaginary, to paint abstract shapes or not even shapes, to paint those

for their own sake or merely as a means to explore process or materiality, relationship or

meaning, or simply paint itself. Or not even paint, but instead use the entire gravitational mass

of everything said and done within painting as a counterweight of reference – to pull something

out of or bounce against, and thus try to contribute to the discourse. One can paint deadserious,

whimsical, cynical or with compassion, and achieve equally grand or unsuccessful

positions. One can give up on painting since everything is already done, or throw oneself fully

into it, since the sea of possibilities is vaster in painting than anywhere else.

Pontus Raud, Visibility in a relationship, 2018, oil pastel on paper, each paper 40x30cm.

Composing Reality places four very different but equally confident painters in a room of

opportunity and risk, balancing and bouncing off each other, and offering you as a visitor the

chance to compare and consider, either by looking straight at their paintings, or at how they

reflect in the painterly style of the others. All four stem from Sweden or have been heavily

invested in that country, but have gathered their educations and inspirations from all over the art

world.

Erla S. Haraldsdóttir is a prolific Icelandic painter, who taught at the Umeå Academy and

has exhibited widely in Sweden. To overcome the problem of endless choice in painting, she

often works according to rules freely taken from friends or colleagues. These restraints liberate

her from having to get stuck in the grand questions of what is meaningful to paint, and instead

spurs her on to engage in the physical activity itself.

Pontus Raud paints to explore the implications of viewing the world as a causal arena,

where things make sense. If we are to believe that there is any necessity to the things happening

around us, we must also assume a meaningful self, and a world full of measurable differences

with inumerable relationships. This creative force of separation can be clearly seen in his latest

series of small oil pastels, where the same motif is often repeated with variation, emphasising the

relationships within the subject.

In Maria Högbackes paintings, the sensory and perception is recurring material. She has

a fascination with colour and its link to emotions and memory. Her image making is concerned

with language and communication, intertwined with itself and the external.

The raw, almost primitive seeming abstract paintings of Emil Holmer are the

meticulously planned result of drawn and collaged studies. As a painter, he is highly aware of

composition, and uses his recurring elements and forms in a very knowing way. He uses

mechanical tools like copy machines and silkscreen in order to find the necessary distance to let

the paintings happen without forcing a form on them. His work is about painting in a

postmodern age, but taking off at the concept of abstraction.

Composing Reality is part of a series of exhibitions

mapping the self-organized art scene in Sweden. It is

curated by Tobias Sternberg, a Swedish artist living

in Berlin and one of the founding members of

HilbertRaum, a non-profit gallery run entirely by

artists.

Composing Reality is open Friday 23rd November to

Sunday 2nd December 2018 in

HilbertRaum

Reuterstrasse 31, 12047 Berlin-Neukölln.

www.hilbertraum.org

Opening Reception Friday 23rd Nov 18.00-22.00

Erla S. Haraldsdóttir, Binary Solarsystem (Fourth day), 2017, oil on linen, 120 x 70cm.