– PRESS RELEASE –
Sara-Vide Ericson, one of the most influential painters of her generation, will be exhibiting in France for the first time in the autumn of 2023. Her large figurative canvases, inspired by surrounding nature and her own personal experience, transform personal stories into universal myths. The “Desire of the Tail” exhibition features some twenty works produced especially for the Institut suédois.
A woman draped in a long skirt and a large shawl sits on a tide of barnacles against what looks like a cliff, a vast wall of brown and chalky tones painted in broad, expressive, almost abstract brushstrokes. She confronts us with her gaze, a rare motif in Sara-Vide Ericson’s work. It is difficult to identify the nature of the landscape and its location. Are we on a beach, by the sea, on the banks of a river or at the edge of a forest? Who is this contemporary oracle, and what message does she wish to deliver?
Sara-Vide Ericson’s work is characterised by large figurative oil paintings inspired by her immediate environment. Recurring motifs in her work include souvenir objects linked to various stories and experiences, her own horses, and the nature that surrounds her – the forests, rivers and marshes of Hälsingland, the wild region of northern Sweden where she grew up and where she and her family relocated almost 10 years ago. However, her paintings are neither navel-gazing self-portraits nor naturalistic landscapes. Boycotting the soft green that heralds the arrival of spring every year, rushing to collect materials before the fateful season begins, Sara-Vide Ericson does not paint the “beautiful nature”, the picture-postcard nature often depicted by artists from Sweden and elsewhere. Cavernous, muddy, dangerous, even devouring, nature is an indomitable force which the artist comes to terms with more than she tries to represent it. Although Sara-Vide Ericson’s paintings are based on her own experience and sometimes feature herself, they reveal very little about her. Her inner landscapes, open to multiple interpretations, remain intriguing mysteries. In search of a form of archetype, they resonate with archaic myths, evoking a primitive and original timelessness. In this way, they are canvases which we are all invited to immerse ourselves in to explore our own connection to the world, to nature, to animals, to ourselves, to living things.
Sara-Vide Ericson is a painter, as demonstrated by her particularly masterful, meticulous and innovative work with materials. For this exhibition, playing on the effects of relief through texture, she has perfected the piping bag method, enabling her to project the paint onto the canvas following precise lines of varying thicknesses, creating three-dimensional ornaments as in pastry- making. These highly textured areas, which she uses to render embroidery and barnacles with greater authenticity, contrast with other areas where the canvas is left almost bare. Her creative process is also based on a form of performativity. It all begins with a search for a motif, outside the studio. Considering herself to be a hunter-gatherer, Sara-Vide Ericson hunts, collects, brings home and then, when the time comes, selects objects-souvenirs, experiences or pieces of landscape and assembles them as paintings in the studio. But when the artist has an image in mind, she first has to make it real. So she creates stagings in which she plays the character, a kind of performance of which she keeps a photographic record and, above all, a physical memory. You have to be able to feel the image, to embody it, in order to paint it. Is this why Sara-Vide Ericson’s works have such a strong presence, such a captivating force?
(Exhibition co-curated by Sara Arrhenius and Marion Alluchon.)
Sara-Vide Ericson
Born in Sweden in 1983, Sara-Vide Ericson is one of the most influential artists of her generation. Since graduating from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm in 2009, she has been invited to present her work in group exhibitions in Scandinavia, the United States, Germany and South Korea, and
more recently she has had a number of solo exhibitions in Sweden and Denmark. Her paintings have already been included in several Swedish public collections, including the prestigious Moderna Museet collection. She has also exhibited at Sara Kulturhus in Skellefteå and Kulturhuset in Stockholm. At the end of the summer, her paintings will be shown at the renowned Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm, in conjunction with sculptures by Tilda Lovell.
“Desire of the Tail” at the Institut suédois in Paris is her first solo exhibition in France and outside Scandinavia. She is represented by the Galleri Magnus Karlsson in Stockholm and the V1 Gallery in Copenhagen.
Further Information
To coincide with the exhibition, a monograph on Sara-Vide Ericson will be published in English by Art & Theory Publishing with texts by Sara Arrhenius, Daniel Birnbaum and Sinziana Ravini.
The exhibition will also give rise to a programme of parallel events on the same subject, in resonance with Sara-Vide Ericson’s artistic universe.
Paris + will also include an exhibition by another Swedish figurative painter, Karin Mamma Andersson, at the David Zwirner gallery.
Useful Information:
• Entrance at 11 rue Payenne, 75003 Paris
• Opening hours: Wednesday — Sunday / 12:00 — 18:00 • Admission free, booking is not required
• Opening: 16.10.2023 / 18:00 — 20:00
• +33 (0)1 44 78 80 20 // www.institutsuedois.fr
With the support of the Swedish Art Council (Kulturrådet) and the Embassy of Sweden in France. Our thanks to the Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm and Paris +.
