Kasper Nordenström and Matti Hoffner: Exposed Surfaces, Shifting Forms

Editorial

13.03.2026

Matti Hoffner, Busenkelt 1 (2025). Courtesy of Saskia Neuman Gallery and the artist.

For Market Art Fair 2026, Saskia Neuman Gallery brings together two Swedish artists working from very different starting points: Kasper Nordenström’s pared-back, post-minimal painting practice and Matti Hoffner’s imaginative, shape-shifting sculptures.

Shown side by side, their works create a presentation built on contrast, transformation, and a shared focus on the material itself. Stockholm-based Kasper Nordenström employs a visual language that is deliberately stripped down. Paint has been scraped back or pushed aside, leaving large areas of exposed canvas where quiet tones either cling, are swallowed whole, or drip with dense linseed oil. The mix of muted colors and clean forms gives the paintings a strong presence, pulling them out of their stillness and revealing both intention and identity at once.

Kasper Nordenström. Photo Carl Tillberg.
Kasper Nordenström, Svacka II (2023). Photo by Carl Tillberg.

His expression connects to traditions like Arte Povera and Post-Minimalism, but with a distinctly personal approach. In his process, the relationship between artist and material is close and sometimes conflicted, with tension and emotion embedded in the work, even if these elements remain unseen.

In contrast, recent Konstfack graduate Matti Hoffner approaches sculpture as a living, mutable form. His work can be seen as in constant motion, ever questioning the finality of art making

Matti Hoffner, Untitled (2023). Courtesy of Saskia Neuman Gallery and the artist.
Matti Hoffner, Busenkelt 11 (2025). Courtesy of Saskia Neuman Gallery and the artist.

His sculptures have the ability to change and morph into new structures, creating a different dialogue by urging the viewer to look at the work from new angles. Hoffner treats material itself as a starting point. The histories embedded in the objects become central to the act of looking.

This approach translates into questioning the way in which we consume the work, using material and concept as entry points into looking at art.

Matti Hoffner. Photo by Henric Hemmerlind.

His sculptural world begins with objects that have already lived. Found objects and worn materials carry traces of past lives. They are not symbols or representations, but bodies that speak of and emulate time. At first glance, the objects appear to have their own identities, yet in Hoffner’s hands new qualities and directions emerge.

Matti Hoffner, Untitled (2024). Courtesy of Saskia Neuman Gallery and the artist.

Nordenström’s almost stripped-down, naked paintings, where paint and linseed oil serve as tools on the mechanics of the canvas, aim to embrace and lean into the conventions of his artistic practice. His undressed and unprotected approach to art making allows Hoffner’s ceramic, ready-made, and found-object sculptures to create poetry and unexpected harmony through iron appendages, clay, brick, and mortar.