Carl Boutard – Degrowth

We are pleased to present Carl Boutard’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, Degrowth, featuring sculpture and drawing. 

Working with sculpture, the relationship between man and nature is central to Carl Boutard’s practice. Collecting fragments and objects from nature as part of his daily practice, Boutard creates a starting point for the sculptures to come. The new exhibition also includes pastel drawings, highlighting Boutard’s foundation in modernism and a masterful feel for colour, shape and form, all abstracted from nature. 

In the exhibition room, bronze sculptures in the shape of crumpled leaves are positioned on the floor. Leaves from the Tree of Life have fallen to the ground. A changed shape is visible as part of life’s cycle and assumes a new curled shape. Different from the blooming spiring state as it originally began.

In Degrowth, downscaling and sharing of resources are the focus. The concept refers to a movement critical of our society’s drive for growth, depleting our resources both from an ecological perspective and as individuals. In his new project, Boutard questions the constant strive towards growth in general and the consequences it may have on a collective level as well as on a personal one. 

Carl Boutard, born in 1975 in Kiruna, holds an MFA from Malmö Art Academy and a BFA from Iceland University of the Arts, Reykjavik. In addition, he has studied architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Since 2017, he has been based in Reykjavik where he holds a position as associate professor and program director at the BA Department of Visual Arts at IUA, the Iceland University of the Arts. 

Boutard’s work has been shown at Reykjavik Art Museum, Skissernas Museum – Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art, Malmö Art Museum, Lunds Konsthall, Sven-Harrys Konstmuseum, Artipelag, Bonniers Konsthall and Centre Culturel Suédois in Paris. Boutard was awarded the ISCP scholarship in New York in 2015, and his public commissions include sites in Stockholm, Uppsala, Karlstad, Lund and Heidenheim, Germany. He is represented in the collections at Malmö Art Museum, Public Art Agency Sweden, Skissernas Museum – Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art in Lund and the National Gallery of Iceland.