Fredrik Söderberg – The Alchemical Wedding

We are pleased to present Fredrik Söderberg's fifth solo exhibition at the gallery, The Alchemical Wedding, featuring a new series of watercolour and oil paintings. Continuing his long-standing interest in symbols and the ways they evolve across time and cultures, Söderberg brings together references from esoteric traditions, myths, and art history in a new body of work where painting itself mirrors the alchemical process. Inspired by the seventeenth-century book ‘The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz’, the exhibition takes its title from a story in which transformation, change, and the meeting of opposites form the central themes.

In The Alchemical Wedding, familiar motifs from the artist's earlier work return in new forms, shaped by recent experiences and an expanded interest in spiritual and visual traditions. Geometric structures, mandalas, celestial bodies, and portraits appear throughout the exhibition, drawing on symbolism from different periods of history alongside ideas from spirituality, religion, and popular culture.

Working with watercolour, oil, and precious metals, Söderberg builds each painting through a meticulous process in which craftsmanship is inseparable from concept. The materials themselves—gold, silver, palladium, lead, ruby, jade, amethyst, onyx, lapis lazuli, ivory, and cinnabar—carry histories and symbolic associations of their own before being transformed into images that acquire new meanings. In this way, the paintings echo the alchemical process referenced in the exhibition's title, where physical materials and visual ideas meet and evolve through the act of painting.

Bringing together historical references, symbolism, material experimentation, and a meticulous painting practice, The Alchemical Wedding continues Söderberg's exploration of art as both a physical and conceptual transformation.

Fredrik Söderberg (b. 1972 in Örebro) lives and works in Stockholm. He holds an MFA from the University College of Arts, Craft & Design and has also studied at the Royal Institute of Art. Solo exhibitions include At the Feet of the Guru (Revisited), 2026, Galleri Riis, Oslo, Världen före världen, 2025, Cecilia Hillström Gallery, Stockholm, Det äventyrliga hjärtat at Skellefteå konsthall in 2023-24. In addition, Söderberg presented a comprehensive survey of his watercolours dated 2008-2019 at the Nordic Watercolour Museum in 2020. His work has also been exhibited at Kristianstad konsthall (with Christine Ödlund) in 2019 as well as at institutions including the Swedish History Museum, Magasin III Museum & Foundation for Contemporary Art, Centre Culturel Suédois, Paris and in numerous gallery exhibitions in Sweden and abroad. Söderberg‘s works are included in the collections of Moderna Museet, Magasin II Museum & Foundation for Contemporary Art, Public Art Agency, and The Nordic Watercolour Museum as well as in private collections.