Paul Fägerskiöld »Mind Palace«

Fields of colour serve as ground for line drawings of pillars of stacked slabs and shelving compartments, some empty, others containing spheres. Using the basic building blocks of painting, Fägerskiöld explores the act of image-making. His practice itself poses the question - why paint? For Fägerskiöld it is part of the process of generating meaning - making language. The thing and the picture of the thing. As in previous series he probes the point where form and image intersect: when does a circle above a line become a sun over a horizon? When do dots on a geometric black field become a night sky?

As always in conversation with art history, Fägerskiöld relates to a matrix of painterly touch points. Here the motifs exist partly in dialog with the 18th century Korean painting tradition of Chaekgeori (books and things) which depicted shelves containing objects of esteemed cultural value, scholarship and learning. In that same tradition Fägerskiöld compresses the three-dimensional composition to flatten the pictorial plane. The combination of line in perspective over monochrome hues evokes the Italian Renaissance rivalry between Disegno (drawing, structure, perspective, localised in Florence with artists like Michelangelo and Raphael) and Colore (colour, characterised by Venetian painters Titian, Giorgione and Tintoretto).

This exhibition acts as a kind of index to Fägerskiöld’s practice at large and marks an ongoing evolution of his pictorial language.

Paul Fägerskiöld was born in Stockholm in 1982 where he lives and works. He has a degree from The Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm and pursued studies at the at The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Fägerskiöld has exhibited widely in galleries in Europe and the Americas. Institutional exhibition venues include, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden (2024), Stavanger Art Museum, Stavanger, Norway (2023), Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland (2021), Borås Konstmuseum, Sweden (2019), Jönköpings läns museum, Jönköping, Sweden (2018), Sven-Harrys konstmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden (2016), Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden (2020, 2016, 2010), Artipelag, Värmdö, Sweden (2015) and Wanås Skulpturpark, Knislinge, Sweden (2010). In 2018 Prins Eugen's Waldemarsudde, Stockholm presented works of Fägerskiöld's Naturgemälde in connection with the Åke Andrén Foundation's Art Grant. In 2013 Moderna Museet, Malmö presented a solo exhibition of Fägerskiöld’s work in connection with the Fredrik Roos Art Grant. His work is included in significant museum collections internationally.