Art Brussels 2026

23 - 26 April 2026

Overview

Cecilia Hillström Gallery is pleased to return to Art Brussels, showcasing a curated selection of new works by prominent Nordic artists: Anna Camner, Leif Engström, Päivi Takala and Alexander Tallén. The project presents four practices that converge around figurative expression, painterly craft, and a profound engagement with art history. Across painting and sculpture, the works share a meticulous attention to process and materiality, revealing a slow, considered approach where detail and technique carry as much weight as narrative. Each artist navigates the tension between observation and imagination, crafting images that resonate with both emotional depth and historical awareness. Together, they create a dialogue between past and present, reality and interpretation, offering viewers intimate encounters with contemporary figurative art.

Camner paints in a space between the tangible and the intangible. Working with oil on acrylic sheets, she creates luminous, introspective images where precision meets mystery. Her wet-on-wet technique allows colours to blend softly, giving each piece a subtle glow and a gentle, almost breathing presence.

Engström captures suburban and forested landscapes charged with melancholy and wonder. Drawing on both art history and the world around him, he transforms everyday scenes into spaces of reflection, where city and nature coexist and memory lingers. His painterly exploration of light and atmosphere gives the works a poetic, contemplative quality.

Takala explores the moment when an image begins to affect us before we fully understand it. With precise brushwork and a soft palette, she creates a balance between clarity and ambiguity. References to Early Renaissance, surrealism, and eighteenth-century British painting inform her work, placing it in a long pictorial tradition while keeping a distinctly contemporary voice.

Tallén works in the tradition of figurines in stoneware, blending historical scenes with playful, modern narratives. His small-scale sculptures spark curiosity and imagination, to project their own stories onto his meticulously crafted characters. Art history informs both motif and method, yet his works remain vividly alive to the possibilities of imagination.