Gallery Steinsland Berliner

Fredrik Åkum (b. 1987) lives and works in Gothenburg. He holds an MFA from Valand Academy (Gothenburg, SE). Fredrik Åkum is a skilled and experienced painter with an oeuvre displaying dedicated efforts to remove himself and his paintings from a place of comfortable comprehension and expected results. A yearning to be surprised by his own work, to truly experience a work of art as an independent observer has caused Åkum to develop a complex methodological system which assures a certain margin of error for an otherwise precise artist.

An appreciation of printing techniques and a fascination of the inherent conclusiveness of the replicated image is central to his art. Åkum will repeatedly copy his own work, an arduous and lengthy process which gradually takes him further away from the primary painting. He likens this process to the natural glitches and inaccuracies that occur when printing by hand, a sequence of intended copies will rarely turn out identical. His abstract compositions are created by awkwardly crouching on the floor, effectively hindering not only movement but also obstructing a clear view of the canvas. Paint is thinned out with various mediums, making it difficult to control and prone to spontaneous seeping and trickling. It is within these restrictive circumstances that Åkum can experience the suspense of not fully being able to foresee the end result