Frida Maureen Hultberg works primarily with drawing and painting, in both small and large formats. The image surfaces are concisely filled with marks and traces of acrylic paint, pencils and oil pastels. They demonstrate a clear interest in and intuition for colour and composition, giving the works complexity and depth, while also having an immediate energy and clarity.
Alternating between figuration and abstraction, Hultberg’s works present a curious coexistence between the world that is visible and comprehensive and something more mystical and otherworldly.
In one series of drawings, the artist depicts everyday surroundings as they appear: a house, a dinner table, a fireplace, a shed in the garden. These motives are direct memories or references from the artist’s life. In another series, we see a river flowing in unnatural spiraling patterns, abstract shapes appear and the image zooms in, to a molecular landscape, or a cosmological universe.
As a whole, Himmelspeil points to “portals” or “channels” where one moves from the familiar to the incomprehensible, entries that connect to larger and wilder forces both within and around us.
The exhibition presents a new series titled Budbringere, where painting takes a more spatial approach and the paper is transformed by repetitive foldings and larger patterns. In compositions stretching from the ceiling to the floor, Hultberg explores unusual formats and the material potential of paperworks. Working with colour, and patterns across scales, the experience of the works changes remarkably depending on the perspective of the observer.
In several of the drawings in Himmelspeil, the artist has chosen to show that the paper is torn out of a sketch book. The unapologetic edges of the paper are raw and perforated, and suggests a kind of urgency within the process. The drawings seem to want to exceed the paper, almost pushing themselves beyond the physical surface. Hultberg´s works explore how the physical and articulated overlaps with something more veiled and speechless, a reminder that our seemingly familiar world is part of larger mysteries – from atoms to stars, from materiality to spirituality.
