Carl Richard Söderström | Scared Straight

Carl Richard Söderström's second solo exhibition at Berg Gallery brings together a series of sculptural works executed in black-firing stoneware clay with several layers of glazes. The exhibition thus indicate a new direction in Söderström's artistic practice, suggesting a shift from a primarily monochrome palette to a more painterly one. Ranging from figurative to abstract in expression, the exhibited works collectively form a narrative about life, nature and man's place in the world. 

Söderström's practice is rooted in an intuitive making that goes beyond rational systems and theoretical models, and the traditional methods of craftmanship serves as a fundament to his work. The process of alternating between long passages of methodical and time-consuming work and moments of chance and spontaneity provides a springboard for his direct, sometimes brutal, formal language.

Söderström's work also springs from a deep fascination for the force of nature and its ability to adapt and reclaim abandoned landscapes. The notion of anima, the animated nature, serves as recurrent reference throughout the exhibition, which also evokes thoughts about ancestral belief systems, relics and places of worship.

Carl Richard Söderström (b. 1960) lives and works in Stockholm. He holds a master's degree in ceramics and glass from Konstfack, where he also specialized in artistic research and public art. His work was most recently exhibited at CHART Art Fair in Copenhagen and has been shown several solo and group exhibitions at Berg Gallery. Söderström has previously exhibited at Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Röhsska Museum, Gothenburg; Gustavsbergs Konsthall; INDEX, Stockholm; Galerie NeC, Paris; and Saatchi Gallery, London, among others. He is represented at the Public Art Agency of Sweden, Röhsska Museum and the Musée National de Céramique in Sèvres.