Olivia Pettersson Fleur – Preserved Dissipation

Cecilia Hillström Gallery is pleased to present our first solo exhibition with the emerging artist Olivia Pettersson Fleur, Preserved Dissipation. Pettersson Fleur works with paper collages in bright and vivid colours consisting of thousands of painted paper shreds. The meticulous process where the craftsmanship is in focus is put in stark contrast to the complex digital expression in her works.

Pettersson Fleur works with contradictory aspects and at first sight opposing elements. She is interested in abstract concepts related to immaterial activities which contains the tiniest of components; it could be anything from radiation to sound and light. Influenced by ideas of data flow and wave-particle duality, a concept in quantum mechanics stating that every particle can be considered to be either a particle or a wave, she explores these mind-boggling ideas visually.

The exhibition Preserved Dissipation consists of a series of six new works. Dissipation refers to a process in a branch of physics, more precisely an irreversible transformation in thermodynamics. The title reveals Pettersson Fleur's interest in contradictory aspects and the imaginative possibilities science can give us. It also captures the experience of watching Pettersson Fleur's work, the feeling of getting close to something augmented but still completely elusive. 

Each work in the exhibition has its own direction and rhythm. Multiple layers of fragments create a three-dimensionality - a space and weightlessness characteristic of the artist. In Sorting Molecules for M, the artist plays with the concept of Maxwell's Demon - a thought experiment which states that an agent can control different molecules through certain conditions. Intense and vivid clusters take shape on the surface which seems to radiate heat as if the particles had been pressed together by force. Speed and motion are somehow always present in Pettersson Fleur's work.

In a way, Pettersson Fleur refrains from the linear perspective and reaches something more abstract and intangible by combining thousands of parts. In the new painting collages, Pettersson Fleur's characteristic waves of information flow have been intersected by circular shapes - possibly the contours of the smallest of elements of a greater whole as our vibrating world is captured in her complex works.

Olivia Pettersson Fleur (b. 1989) holds an MFA from the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (2018) and a BFA from the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts - Umeå University (2016). Pettersson Fleur has exhibited at Färgfabriken, Stockholm, Körsbärsgården, Gotland, 3331 Arts Chiyoda, Tokyo and Tsukuba Art museum, Tsukuba in Japan, and at Alta Art Space, Malmö. She was awarded the scholarship of Marianne och Sigvard Bernadottes konstnärsfond 2021, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee's one-year working grant 2019 and the Brucebo Foundation Residency/Scholarship in 2018. She is represented in the collections of Public Art Agency Sweden, Region Stockholm and Region Uppsala.