Stockholm

Established in 2006, Belenius is a contemporary art gallery based in Stockholm.

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Currently, Katarina Sjögren and Niklas Belenius own and manage the gallery. The gallery features both international and Swedish artists, known for its intergenerational approach and the integration of contemporary art with art historical pieces.

At Market Art Fair 2024, Belenius will present four female painters, each with a strong visual language and energy. They come from different cultures and eras, but the works share the same desire to break out of the mold, to shake up the barriers between representational and abstract, between the familiar and the unknown and to make an energetic impact on the room and the mind.

Featured artists

Isabella Ducrot

Isabella Ducrot (b. 1931 in Naples, Italy) lives and works in Rome, Italy. Ducrot is known for her devoted use of woven cloth as the founding material of her artistic practice. Only beginning her artistic career later in life, the Italian artist has assembled a sublime collection of antique textiles through her extensive travels through Asia, originating primarily from Turkey, India, China, Tibet and Afghanistan. Her practice combines works on paper and vintage fabric and she often works in very large scales.

Ducrot solo shows include solo presentations at Art Basel Unlimited with Galerie Gisela Capitain and Standard in 2022, Belenius Stockholm, 2022, Standard Oslo, 2022, San Giuseppe alle Scalze a Pontecorvo, Napoli, 2021; Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, 2021; Galerie Mezzanin, Geneva, 2020; Capitain Petzel, Berlin, 2019; and Spazio Parlato, Palermo, 2018. In 2014 Ducrot had a major exhibition at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome and in 1993 and 2011 she showed her work at the Venice Biennale. Courtesy © Galerie Gisela Capitain

Isabella Ducrot, 'Tendernesses', (2021). Pigments, paper and pencil on Gampi paper, 139 x 87 cm. © Images courtesy of Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne. Photo by Mareike Tocha

Isabella Ducrot, 'Dress', (2021). China ink and pigments and silk on cotton, 165 x 153 cm. © Images courtesy of Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne. Photo by Giogrio Benni

Isabella Ducrot, Portrait of Isabella Ducrot, Rome 2021 © Photo by Albrecht Fuchs

Kyungseo Lee

Within her practice, Kyungseo Lee explores the conflicting emotions and values towards the human experience. The erotically charged images serve as a stressor to the viewer, challenging one’s own ambivalence on the topic of ‘body image’. The figures in Kyungseo Lee’s paintings morph into abstraction from form to expression which additionally serve as an opportunity for interpretation from different perspectives.

Kyungseo Lee (b.1995) is an artist based in London. She earned her MA at the Royal College of Art in Painting (2023) and BA at Hongik University in Painting and Visual Communication Design (2020). Lee was selected as an artist in residence at Cité Internationale des Arts (France, 2016), and PADA Artist Residency (Portugal, 2023). Her works have been shown internationally including solo exhibition at LKIF Gallery (Korea, 2021), and a number of group exhibitions including shows with: OHSH Projects, Soho Revue and Blue Shop Gallery. She recently had a solo show in Europe, at Makasiini Contemporary (Finland, 2024).

Portrait of Kyungseo Lee by Kyungseo Lee

Kyungseo Lee, 'Sweet Regrets' (2022). Oil on canvas, 180 x 250 cm. © Image courtesy of the Artist. Photos by Kyungseo Lee

Kyungseo Lee, 'Couple I' (2022). Oil on linen, 60 x 50 cm. © Image courtesy of the Artist. Photos by Kyungseo Lee

Astrid Kajsa Nylander

Astrid Kajsa Nylander (b. 1989 in Gothenburg, Sweden) lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. Nylander studied at Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg and graduated with an MFA in 2018. Nylander creates colorful and playful paintings, often in shaped canvases and neon colors.

Her ongoing series “minijobs” are small paintings in geometric or floral shapes, depicting a memory of buttons. The series function as fierce bursts of ideas, adding to a bigger body of work altogether where nostalgia, dark humor and vibrant pops of color meet. Nylander’s "minijobs" works are represented in the collection of Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

Previous solo exhibitions include Belenius in 2022, Page, NYC in 2020 and Kunstverein Siegen in 2019. In 2019 Nylander was awarded the Stiftung Sparkasse Siegen prize for ”Junge Kunst” followed by a solo presentation in Siegen Kunstverein (DE). Nylander had both curated and exhibited her works at a group exhibition draw a door in the wall and slip through it at Belenius in 2023 with her friends and previous classmates, artists Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, Beatrice Marchi and Tanja Nis-Hansen from Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg.

Astrid Kajsa Nylander. Portrait. © Photo by Märta Thisner

Astrid Kajsa Nylander, 'pink minijob 37' (2023). Oil on linen, 65 x 25 cm.

Astrid Kajsa Nylander, 'Internally Inconsistent' (2023). Oil on linen, 170 x 50 cm.

Astrid Kajsa Nylander, 'Crop #1' (2023). Oil on linen, 50 x 50 cm.

Elsa Thoresen

Elsa Cecilie Thoresen (born May 1, 1906 in Benson, Minnesota, USA. Died August 20, 1994 in Seattle, USA.)Thoresen was a surrealist painter, who lived and worked in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and the US. She lived in Copenhagen between 1935 – 1944. Escaping the Nazi occupation of Denmark in 1944, Thoresen lived and worked in Stockholm and spent her summers in Halmstad. She moved back to the US in 1953.

Thoresen’s work was shown at the important Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme in Paris in 1938, organized by surrealist theorist André Breton and possibly the movement's most important poet Paul Éluard. In 1947 she was the only woman in the Danish group at the International Surrealist Exhibition in the Galerie Maeght in Paris.

Thoresen’s later paintings became more abstract, drawing the viewer into the quiet intimate smaller format, to take part of what appears to be almost a choreography of movement of shapes. Energy flows with the brush strokes and takes the shapes your imagination allows it to, flowers, stars, universes or pure energy of color.

For Market Art Fair 2024, Belenius is happy to be able to present four previously not shown works. The works are executed in oil on a panel and canvas. The formats are strikingly small and radiate intimacy. These artworks, which until now have lived a life in obscurity, were found and preserved by the artist’s family in the US

Elsa Thoresen, 'Untitled' (ca 1954). Oil on linen/panel, 25,2 x 20 cm. © Images courtesy of Belenius Stockholm

Elsa Thoresen, 'Untitled' (ca 1954). Oil on linen/panel, 25,2 x 20 cm. © Images courtesy of Belenius, Stockholm

Belenius

Ulrikagatan 13
115 23 Stockholm

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