Håkan Rehnberg »By an Oak and a Rock«

Rehnberg has long chosen to work with one and the same material in his paintings, oil on blasted acrylic glass. Despite the repetition, by turning and twisting, meeting and pushing away, he has persistently expanded the boundaries of his own painting. The exhibition presents a suite of new and recent black and white paintings where the thickly applied gesture that has characterised the works of recent years is now replaced with a double movement where the paint is finally scraped down to a smooth thin surface. Matte black is the only thing that remains. The intense movements have been replaced by vertical, massive forms where the gesture is only hinted at in the contours.

The exhibition also presents a video vignette - Rehnberg's first video work. It presents a brutal scene of transformation and spectacle in an arresting moment from nature's reality.

The entire exhibition is imbued with artistic questioning and enquiry. Earlier this year, Rehnberg formulated his artistic stance in a speech at the Royal Academy of Art:

"I mean that Art does not belong and should be associated with the usable, but that it belongs to the sublime. I would really like to remove art from the realm of the beautiful and transfer it to the sublime. - From measure to measurelessness.

The very experience of the sublime makes one suddenly speechless, stunned, formless and mute, placed outside oneself.

Language and form are destroyed in the wake of the sublime. It is as if the speech or the work of art is not carried out - but held back - and becomes visible in this holding back. And by that I mean an extreme visibility."

From Professionalism och annat, Håkan Rehnberg (2023)

Håkan Rehnberg was born 1953 in Göteborg and currently lives and works in Stockholm. He has exhibited widely both in Sweden and internationally, with recent solo exhibitions at Nässjö Konsthall (2019), Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2015), Galerie Nordenhake Stockholm/Berlin/Mexico City (2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2017, 2020, 2022), Malmö Konstmuseum (2007), Studio A (Otterndorf, 2006), Vida Konsthall, Halltorp, Sweden (2005), and Sønderjyllands Kunstmuseum, Tønder, Denmark (2004), Liljevalchs Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden (2002). He has participated in group exhibitions that were presented at The Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm, Sweden (2022), the Sydney Biennale (2010), Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (2009), National Art Museum of China, NAMOC, Beijing (2008), the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2003), and the Helsinki City Art Museum (2002). In 2002, the artist was nominated for the Carnegie Art Award, and his work was presented in the same year in the corollary exhibition at the Reykavik Art Museum. He has been a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts since 2000.