Sigrid Sandström – Dry Maars

Cecilia Hillström Gallery is proud to announce representation of Sigrid Sandström. In the inaugural exhibition in the gallery's new space at Hudiksvallsgatan, Sandström presents a series of new paintings.

As a painter, Sigrid Sandström has continuously been exploring site as a concept as well as emotional experience. Over time, the depicted large-scale, barren and uninhabited landscapes have become more abstract. This time, a residency in the south of France is a starting point for her work. Living and working in the house of Dora Maar for a month, Sandström's paintings emerge step by step; a process imbued by impressions of the surrounding landscape.

For Sandström, this site-specific experience puts emphasis on geology and time. As the days pass working in the villa, thoughts circle around what is left behind. In the secluded house time stands still in and the senses are heightened. Gradually, the word residue - both physical and emotional - seems to describe the process. The remnants of motions transform into an image, a sedimentary imprint. As in Sandström's previous works, the process is quite bluntly displayed in the layers of colors and textures on the canvas. At the same time, her practice is engaged in reflecting on the relationship between the painter, the viewers and the surrounding space. In the painting Image Inverted, a solitary, man-sized monolith is hovering on the canvas. Its presence in the exhibition creates a temporary imbalance, emphasizing the autonomous space surrounding each painting.

By coincidence, the name Maar leads us to the geological phenomenon maar, a low-relief volcanic crater caused by an explosion when water comes into contact with hot lava. They are typically filled with water, but a dry maar is a dried-up remnant of a violent event. In the exhibition, the painting Dry Maar is displayed horizontally; is it a map of an ancient disaster?

"In Sigrid Sandström's work even the shapes made by chance adhere to an inner logic. Like after an explosion, when the appearance and placement of the shattered objects has a certainty, which would be disturbed if someone started poking around." - Katja Miroff, "After an Explosion", Sigrid Sandström, The Site of Painting, Art & Theory, 2016

Perhaps Sandström's paintings are closely tied to the turbulent history of the earth, its millions of years of draughts, floods and geological catastrophes. On the other hand they can just as much be presages of what is to come. Sandström's paintings carry an immediateness, creating a suspension of time. It is in this gap that we are caught off guard -uncertain of time and space - in front of her works.