Linnea Rygaard – Area 51
We are pleased to present Linnea Rygaard’s fifth solo exhibition at the gallery, Area 51, featuring a new series of acrylic paintings. In the new show, the artist takes her starting point from the real yet highly mythologised site in Nevada, whose restricted architecture and surrounding culture of secrecy have made it a fertile ground for ideas of the strange and unknown. The site is deeply embedded in popular culture and occupies a central place in stories of extraterrestrial life and conspiracy theories. Area 51 becomes a starting point for Rygaard’s exploration of imagination, curiosity, and fear.
Through a series of large-scale paintings, environments emerge in which architectural structures intersect with images of captured spacecraft, laboratories, and detained aliens. The geographical site is transformed into a mental and pictorial terrain, where elements drawn from reality are combined with imagined scenarios. The paintings depict spaces that appear both functional and enigmatic, carefully constructed yet ultimately impossible to fully decipher. They exist somewhere between realism and fiction, inviting the viewer to look for clues while withholding a clear narrative.
The works are characterised by a direct and physical materiality, while the compositions remain rigorously structured. Central perspective plays a crucial role, creating a heightened sense of depth, direction, and presence. Rather than functioning solely as a traditional illusionistic device, perspective becomes a means of extending the paintings into the exhibition space, drawing the viewer into the environments they depict.
Linnea Rygaard (b. 1990) holds an MFA from the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (2016) and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, USA, in 2015. Furthermore, Rygaard was awarded the Royal Institute of Art's residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2016. Her work has been shown at Market Art Fair, Stockholm, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm, HILDE Gallery, Los Angeles, CHART Art Fair, Copenhagen, and Liljevalchs konsthall.
Public commissions include a site-specific mural on Kungsgatan in Stockholm, a sculptural installation in Varberg as well as at Magnus Ladulås Square in Jönköping, a mural commissioned by Stockholm City Council/Stockholm Konst, and site-specific paintings for the municipalities of Uppsala and Gävle.
Rygaard is represented in the collections of Uppsala Art Museum, Västerås konstmuseum, Public Art Agency Sweden, Stockholm Konst, Region Uppsala, Region Halland, Region Dalarna, Region Gävleborg, Region Skåne, Region Stockholm, as well as in the collections of the municipalities of Uppsala, Varberg, Knivsta, Östersund and Jönköping. She is also represented in several corporate and private collections.
