ELASTIC Gallery

Stockholm

The gallery is since 2021 located in Jädraås in the county of Gävleborg, where we present 3-4 exhibitions a year in our space ELASTIC Rural.

At Market Art Fair 2021, ELASTIC Gallery presents 'Duo - Kabinett with Charlotte Walentin and Per Mårtensson'. The two artists share an interest in the painterly surface as well as the concept of space. Their practice reaches beyond the actual canvas and focus on the relation between the art work, space and the movement of the viewer. While operating in the field between the object and the two dimensional, their exhibitions often provide an experience of a kind of Kabinett due to their common spatial awareness.

Per Mårtensson

Per Mårtensson lives and works in Malmö where he graduated from Malmö Art Academy in 1997. For Market 2021 he will be presenting a new group of paintings produced in 2021. In a previous group, the Escalator-paintings, he used the idea of the ever-revolving escalator steps as a starting point, translating these into full scale painterly reproductions of escalator steps, a series of 80x80 cm diptychs of acrylic paint on aluminium panels echoing their industrial roots in the mechanical mode of production as the image is created by scraping off paint. By tilting the images 90 degrees, he makes us vaguely recognise, but not instantly identify, pieces of urban imagery many of us encounter daily. Often based on similar images of urban surfaces, Mårtensson translates these flat surfaces into the context of painting, engaging in dialogues between art historical references, playfully interpreting the grammar of painting in using the pictorial as well as the physical space.

'Escalator(08)', 2018 acrylic on aluminium, 80x80cm. Image credits ELASTIC Gallery and Per Mårtensson.

Charlotte Walentin

Charlotte Walentin is based in Malmö 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. For Market Art Fair 2021, Walentin will present a new series that at this very moment is being developed in the studio. Just as the previous series Fold (2018-2020), it is made of large chunks of canvas, saturated with ink, the shape determined by the use of eyelets and the weight of the material. The materiality is essential in Walentin's artistic practice, it sets the context and the logic to the works. 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 obvious connection to painting.

Portrait of Charlotte Walentin. Image credits Andreas Omvik

Detail of 'Bruja', 2021, Ink and eyelets, approx. 235 x 294 x 25 cm. Image credits ELASTIC Gallery and Charlotte Walentin.

'Bruja', 2021, Ink and eyelets, approx. 235 x 294 x 25 cm. Image credits ELASTIC Gallery and Charlotte Walentin.