The jury’s statement:
Simon Wadsted
Simon Wadsted’s paintings are supernatural and enchanted. No people or creatures are present in them. The paintings fill the viewer with amazement. At times frightening, realistic or humorous, they are always unique, with no standard themes or formats. Recurring traits are the precise brushwork and the meticulously handled fields, where space is conjured out of the flat surface. Each part of the painting contains its own story that leads us into new worlds and other spaces. In the painting “General”, with its strong diagonal reminiscent of De Chirico, the locomotive smoke looks like cement. In “Vårbrytning” (Early Spring) the dust hovers in the air, in a static encounter between reality and unreality. In “Gryning” (Dawn), the artist squeezes the last drops out of the gum turpentine and the ivory black oil paint, combining it with a salmon pink surface to create a multidimensional, diabolical image. At the top to the right is a miniscule white speck.
Sara Ekholm Eriksson
Growing, becoming and disappearing imbue Sara Ekholm Eriksson’s installations. Materials such as glass, stone and coral are seamlessly joined into new objects resembling animated artifacts from an undefined future. In thorough explorations, she creates works where materials and poetry merge with layers of depth, time and future. Dreamlike and organic, Sara Ekholm Eriksson’s sculptures seem to cut through the time-space, where they engender new perceptions of something that feels like we should already know.
Every year, the Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation awards grants to young Swedish artists to support their work. The foundation was established by Jeanette Bonnier in 1985, in memory of her daughter Maria, who lost her life in a car accident at the age of 20. Since then, the Foundation has always sought out the new and innovative, and several of those who have received the grant are now some of Sweden’s most renowned contemporary artists.
Image: Simon Wadsted and Sara Ekholm Eriksson. Photo: Christofer Dracke.
