Summer show: Group Exhibition

We are happy to present our summer group show, featuring works by Jan Carleklev, Ellen Ehk, Andreas Glad, Sylvia Naimark, John Rainey, Maya Strandberg, Dea Svensson, Elizabeth Thun and Karin Törnell. Read more about the participating artists here below.

Jan Carleklev (b. 1972) works as an artist with sound as his main material, often in participatory processes where he explores power, knowledge, and loss in relation to man's often complicated relationship with nature, together with his audience. Carleklev was educated at Konstfack, HDK and the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, and has a background as a composer and musician. The exhibition presents the sound work The unknown forest, which he has created in dialogue with Ellen Ehk's The River. Carleklev's sound world balances on the edge of silence and invites visitors to sharpen their senses.

Ellen Ehk (b. 1976) works primarily with sculpture in bronze, glass and clay. The forest is her main source of inspiration and in her work she explores nature’s voice, (life)forms, and shapes. Ehk holds a master's degree in ceramic art from HDK and has previously been shown in several exhibitions at Berg Gallery, most recently in the acclaimed solo exhibition Geomancy (2020). The installation The River, previously shown at VIDA Museum & Konsthall, is a collaboration with sound artist Jan Carleklev in which Ehk's smooth and irregular ceramic sculptures form a still riverbed.

Andreas Glad (b. 1976) works with oil painting in a realistic style, often based on self-made models constructed from simple materials. Climate change and global warming is a recurring theme that Glad depicts through deserted cities and landscapes where the contrasts between nature and civilization, prosperity and decay, light and shadow, are palpable. The work Desert Oasis was created as the model for the series of paintings entitled "Diamonds Are Forever” and was shown during Market Art Fair 2021.

Sylvia Naimark's (b. 1955) imagery oscillate between the abstract and the concrete. With the materiality of the medium, her works are woven together into a painterly style that is both restrained and intuitive. The works in the series sandpaper wings I - VIII (2016) can be seen as a kind of diary entries that reflect momentary streams of thought and fragments from an ongoing narrative. Naimark studied at Konstfack and Bezalel Academy of Art, Jerusalem, and was last shown in the group exhibition Afterglow at Konstnärshuset in Stochkolm (2022).

John Rainey's (b. 1985) sculptural works hint at the plasticity of digital culture and its ability to challenge the natural order of things. Materials are coaxed into behaving in ways that disrupt our expectations: porcelain masquerades as silicone and silicone as porcelain, forms we recognize as static and decorative mutate and sprout bodily appendages. Rainey was last shown at the gallery in 2019, in the critically acclaimed solo exhibition Flayground. The group show features wall-hung works from the series Eyeballed (2019) and Watcher (2019).

Maya Strandberg (b. 1981) works non-figuratively with sculpture in clay. The process of investigating the form is at the heart of Strandberg's work, which is permeated by a desire to find balance between harmony and dissonance. Her exhibitions often feature both organic shapes, and architecturally informed works. Strandberg is educated at HDK in Gothenburg and lives and works in Stockholm, having her studio in Gustavsberg's old porcelain factory. Strandberg presented her previous solo exhibition at Berg Gallery in November 2021.

Dea Svensson's (b. 1980) carefully executed ink drawings are made up of millimeter-thin lines and dots. Svensson holds a master's degree in fine art from Malmö Art Academy and his work was last presented in the solo exhibition entitled Inland at Berg Gallery in September 2021. Technically, he can be said to work in the pointillist tradition, but his work is more closely related to John Bauer's nature romanticism and symbolism. In the suite of images presented here, nature provides a backdrop against which various moods, supernatural elements and obscurities are depicted.

Elizabeth Thun (b. 1978) depicts landscapes that are both scenic and saturated with history. Her paintings are built up in layers where different and sometimes contradictory expressions are allowed to coexist. In the diptych View of Mountains (2022), water plays a central role; water that means everything to human survival and that connects us humans with all other life on the planet. In the background are the eastern parts of the Santa Monica Mountains, commonly known as Hollywood Hills. Here the viewer is invited to reflect on our contemporary perception of nature and its place in our increasingly global society.

In her artistic practice, Karin Törnell (b. 1966) explores the relationship between human experience and the body, and form and materiality. With a directness of expression, she creates forms that are both familiar and alien. Cast glass is a recurring and supporting element in her work, challenging opposites such as fragility/durability, lightness/weight, and transparency/opaqueness. Her work has previously been shown in a number of solo exhibitions, most recently at Galerie NeC in Paris (2021) and at Galleri Glas in Stockholm (2018). Törnell will present her first solo exhibition at Berg Gallery in the spring of 2023.