ELASTIC Gallery
Jädraås
The gallery opened in 2005 in Malmö in the south of Sweden where the gallery for its first 10 years exhibited many of the leading Swedish artists from the Malmö art scene, this along side acclaimed
international artists.
The gallery has participated in international art fairs such as Art Basel, Frieze Art Fair, Zona MACO, Art Brussels, and Material Art Fair, as well as MARKET Art Fair. For a number of years, the gallery ran Monopol Stockholm, which gathered young Swedish galleries BELENIUS, Crystal, and Johan Berggren Gallery in a group show format that allowed for guest appearances by international artists and galleries. Since 2020, the gallery is located in the rural village of Jädraås, about 2 1/2 hours north of Stockholm in the heart of the county of Gästrikland. On-site visitors can experience exhibitions in the gallery space as well as a growing sculpture park.
Featured artists
Jamila Drott
Jamila Drott (born 1979) is based in Malmö, Sweden she studied textile art and visual art at HDK- Valand and KHIO in Oslo. Her artistic practice operates on the border between painting, sculpture, durational performance and body art.
Drott’s works approach an abstract tradition in which policies of power, day jobs and resistance are expressed through open letters, hidden messages and physical interactions with various, often refused, materials and practices.
Specific for Drott’s process is how the image is approached as a horizontal plane; a surface placed on the ground that the artist moves across as she inscribes it with sculptural gestures, layers of paint, drawings and inscriptions. Drott’s sculptural paintings bear resemblance of undulating landscapes, topographical maps and ghostly satellite images, whilst simultaneously bearing witness to the fierce interactions between the artist and her material. Granting herself access to public space, by using the city as work space, Drott also lets the surrounding context influence and imprint her work.
Drott will crate two large scale works for our presentation, similar to the work in the reference
images. The work will either be hung on the walls of the booth, or hanging in mid-air in order to
emphasize the full scale and physical presence of the works in the booth. This way of presenting
the pieces makes them to also can act as dividers, and then direct the viewers way of
experiencing all the exhibited works in the booth presentation.
Jamila Drott, 'antisocialt element iii ', (2022).
Charlotte Walentin
Charlotte Walentin (born 1965) is based in Malmö, Sweden after receiving her MFA from Malmö Art Academy in 1999. She creates objects that oscillate in between sculpture and painting, item and body, the artificial and the organic, deriving from the characteristics of the material and its presence in the room.
Materiality is essential in Walentin´s artistic practice, it sets the context and the logic to her artworks. She is especially interested in the textile matter, as a material both highly charged and complex in terms of art, craft and as a cultural product, with a reference to the body and the skin as well as the connection to painting. The new works border to craft, but balance tightly on the fine art side of the line.
For Market 2024, Walentin will present a new series of vowen canvases a new medium for the
artist. The works will be made up from discarded paintings and objects from other bodies of work
these material that comprises the new works is then vowen in a traditional loom. The piece is then
stretched and put in wooden frames. Creating an appearance that at first look seem to represent a
flat surface, but which at closer inspection is a surface that is much more object based, The
surface and the way they catch the surrounding light highlight the individual thread/lines in the
surface and its fabric like appearance.
Charlotte Walentin, 'Mesh 2 ', (2023).
Charlotte Walentin, Photo Andreas Omvik.
Erik Uddén
Erik Uddén (born 1990) is based in Stockholm he received his MA from The Royal Academy in Stockholm in 2022.
Uddéns practice challenge the idea of the traditional way to present a painted surface on a canvas placed on a stretcher. He creates this by starting to modify the stretcher before he mounts the canvas. The paint he uses is closer to plaster, that quality of the paint is created by mixing filler and acrylic paint, that then is applied to the canvas with a putty knife. This generates a surface and material that is closer to concrete then paint, a multi-layered approach that is reveled when one looks at the side of the works.
But Uddén is a painter at heart, even thou his practice at the moment is flirting with objects rather then flat surfaces. This is where the artworks has their depth and edge! What is very appealing is how the works flex in experience and presence in the exhibition space change depending on our way of viewing and approaching the canvases. We have to be active in our examination of his practice and works, we can’t just dérive then we will miss thee essence of the works.
Uddén will present new canvases made in dialogue with the two other artist that the gallery propose to present. The works are developed as a duo that will be used as portals into the concept of the booth, even thou they at first glance seems solid and static.
Erik Uddén.
Erik Uddén, 'Slope 2'
