Gunnel Wåhlstrand

It is with great pleasure that Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm presents an exhibition of new paintings by Gunnel Wåhlstrand.

For her entire career, Gunnel Wåhlstrand has worked exclusively with ink wash. This technique entails a manner of painting on paper in which tonality and shading are achieved by varying the ink density, the amount of ink and the pressure of each brushstroke. Once a stroke is painted, it cannot be altered or erased. Wåhlstrand’s process of creating meticulous reconstructions of photographic documentation is deeply personal yet has a universally affecting presence. The precise and technically demanding process is also painstakingly slow and results in a very spare production.

With the ink wash technique, Wåhlstrand immerses herself in an image in order to truly see it. In a manner that is both poetic and precise it allows for her to approach a location physically and psychologically, where the recollection of a specific site is so much more than just a memory. Within re-creation lies the hope of eternalization, and the wish to understand as well as fully be absorbed by the landscape. Every layer is a repetition, and when the work is complete Wåhlstrand knows the place by heart.

Wåhlstrand’s body of work has previously consisted of images from her family photo albums, but in recent years, she has been focused on a landscape of deep personal importance. The depicted motifs in her new works are renderings of a place of personal history and resonance, by the sea on the west coast of Sweden.

I've been to this place in real life probably a thousand times, maybe several thousands. It is a large island that lies far out in the Kosterfjorden, as far as you can get without a boat. I don't know what it is about this particular place that touches me so, but it feels more eternal than others. Whatever happens, I can go there. It is a nature reserve so nothing can be built there, you can hardly move a stone. Then there is something about the size, it probably takes a whole day to get around if you climb near the water. To get to the rocks, you have to walk a bit through pine forest, there are many different paths to take, it's like different gates out to the sea, and you choose the path according to need and where the sun is. I have painted this place 12 times now, over 7 years. In terms of time, I have been on the painted island longer than the physically real one. When I think of the place, I no longer know which version it is.

- Gunnel Wåhlstrand, talking about the work Sea Kale

For the first time, Wåhlstrand has also made a painting of a painting, recreating not the watercolour itself but rather how it was seen, larger than life and with reflexions in the glass. The portrait of her maternal grandmother, possibly from the 1950s, seems to have been executed quickly, something is askew. The work was always there and the experience of it deeply formative. This work is the most recent and marks the 50th in the artist’s production over the past two decades since her graduation exhibition.

Gunnel Wåhlstrand (b. 1974), lives and works in Stockholm. She has been represented by Andréhn-Schiptjenko since 2003 and has developed an exceptional œuvre since her acclaimed graduation show the same year. Her spare production can be found in important collections around the world and has been documented in several monographs. Her most recent institutional solo exhibition was at Gothenburg Museum of Art in conjunction with the Sten A Olsson Cultural Scholarship (2019) and prior to that, at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (2017) as well as at Magasin III - Museum & Foundation for Contemporary Art in Stockholm (2017).

For more information and images, please contact Hanna Lundberg at
hanna@andrehn-schiptjenko.com

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Gunnel Wåhlstrand: Stockholm

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