Cecilia Edefalk »I'M NOT HERE. I'M DREAMING«

The ethereal has long been a theme in Edefalk's work. Even her most present subjects have an otherworldly quality. Her familiar strategy of repetition seems to undermine an experience of here-ness, rather than reinforce it. However in the act of painting Edefalk follows an ethos of now-ness, and adheres to Rick Rubin’s maxim to “be attentive to the moment, not to be in the future, and not in the past, but only what is happening right now.”

An important aspect of Edefalk’s approach and process is that she “connects” and receives counsel from deceased artists. In this case Wilhelmson himself has advised on how to carry out her paintings. Notes from her seances are transcribed and can be found below.

Bronze Drawing, a freestanding sculpture cast from a spindly part of a vine, rhythmically interacts with the paintings in the exhibition: its materiality dissolved into an abstract spatial drawing

Cecilia Edefalk (b.1954, Norrköping) lives and works in Stockholm. Her oeuvre has been the subject of major retrospectives in 2020 at Norrköping Museum of Art and in 2016 at Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm. Solo museum exhibitions include Moderna Museet, Stockholm; BAMPFA, Berkeley Art Museum; Parasol unit, London; The Art Institute of Chicago; Malmö Konstmuseum; Lunds Konsthall, Sweden; Kunsthalle Kiel, Germany; Kunsthalle Bern. Her work has appeared in many group shows at various international venues including at Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau; Moderna Museet, Malmö; Documenta 11, Kassel; 22nd São Paulo Biennial; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco; Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris.

Presentations of her work currently are highlighted in the Maurizio Cattelan’s exhibition, The Third Hand, and Rashid Johnson’s Seven Rooms and a Garden, both at Moderna Museet.