Market Art Fair

Echoes of Nature, Traces of Time

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Photo by Ruben Risholm. Courtesy of Galleri Thomassen and Ruben Risholm

In a presentation where wood meets canvas and myth meets memory, Galleri Thomassen brings together Roger Metto and Ruben Risholm. Through vivid brushwork and sculptural form, the artists explore the boundaries between nature, time, and transformation.

At first glance, Roger Metto and Ruben Risholm may seem like an unlikely pairing – Metto’s layered brushstrokes in vivid, shifting hues contrast sharply with Risholm’s sculptural forms in wood and ceramic. Yet beneath their distinct approaches lies a shared sensibility: a deep engagement with nature, memory, and the passage of time.

  • Photo by Jacob Risholm. Courtesy of Galleri Thomassen and Ruben Risholm

Ruben Risholm’s sculptures, reliefs, and drawings form fragments of a personal mythology, shaped by an intuitive dialogue with his materials. Often working with entire tree trunks, he allows the organic qualities of wood to guide the process, creating forms that exist somewhere between nature and craft. Themes of religion, myth, and folklore run through his work, where personal narratives merge with echoes of the past. There’s a quiet intensity to his figures – rooted in history yet entirely his own.

 

  • Photo by Ruben Risholm. Courtesy of Galleri Thomassen and Ruben Risholm

For Roger Metto, the landscapes of his native Kiruna are an endless source of inspiration. His paintings capture the spirit of the North – where forests and mountains shift in light and shadow – with compositions that feel at once expansive and intimate. Through colour, contrast, and movement, Metto explores perception and memory, balancing the familiar with the imagined.

  • Photo by Sophie Blumenthal. Courtesy of Galleri Thomassen and Roger Metto
  • Photo by Rebecca Eskilsson. Courtesy of Galleri Thomassen and Roger Metto
  • Photo by Rebecca Eskilsson. Courtesy of Galleri Thomassen and Roger Metto

Despite their differences in medium, Metto and Risholm’s works find a shared rhythm. Metto’s expressive brushstrokes mirror the repetitive gestures of Risholm’s carving tools. While Risholm’s sculptures seem pulled from another time, they remain deeply connected to the physicality of the present – just as Metto’s paintings act as portals to distant, remembered landscapes. In their juxtaposition, the material and the ephemeral converge, offering a meditation on time, place, and transformation.