Claes Eklundh, SE

Claes Eklundh (born 1944) became, during the 1980s and 90’s, one of Sweden’s foremost artists.

He is also a personal friend and contemporary of, among others, Ola Billgren, Jan Håfström and Madeleine Pyk. After a ten-year absence, Eklundh is now making a long-awaited return to the Swedish art scene. While Malmo has long been his home, he has held studios in, among other cities, Rome, Paris, Berlin and New York, and his work has been exhibited globally. He is moreover well represented by all of Sweden’s major institutions and by many eminent collectors.

During his recent ‘quiet period’, Eklundh has in fact been far from idle, having invested his usual frenzied energy into creating works that have never previously been shown. How might this new emergent art be described? How can we put into words what words are incapable of describing? A first attempt might be to say that it is as if Eklundh’s art has been released from its earthly shackles and become weightless. The corporeal, the earthbound has given way to motifs that can be as light as a breath of air, but whose ethereality also acts as a portal. It is sometimes as if the paintings can be heard.

Subjects that were previously so grave, stoic and/or aggressive – with titles such as Väktare (Guardian), Yttersta domen (Last Judgment), Pietà, Vrede (Wrath) and Såret (The Wound) – have been replaced by anonymous faces and abstract landscapes characterized by a gaze and a curiosity that seems to emanate from a perspective far beyond ourselves. These are paintings that observe us with wonder, rather than seeking to cast judgment. And then there is his use of colour; the deep blues that fill his monumental scenes of Berlin and New York have been replaced by swirling, sometimes rather curious colour tones from a palette redolent of one of his former hometowns: Paris – or Provence, to which he took many study trips. Here, in what appears to be a sudden encounter, red, orange, yellow and pink meet azure blue.

Many will be surprised to see a giant of his field once again showing new works in a style that, while no doubt recognizable, also encompasses a brand new Eklundh form of expression. Sorrow, anger, passion and longing are just some of the themes that the visitor will experience.