Inman Gallery is pleased to present a selection of new paintings by Sigrid Sandström. The exhibition opens Saturday, July 23, with a reception from 2:00–4:00pm, concurrent with the group exhibition HOWL.
For the past 20 years, Sandström has been exploring the power of the painted surface to communicate visual precarity, and to encourage a sense of wonder and exploration in her viewers. The surface of a Sandström painting exists as a vestige, an imprint, evidence of a previous act while also depicting something visually different than its referent. It points to the past while simultaneously unfolding in the present moment.
The newest works are more sparce than in the past, with several painted or printed elements floating in tension within a raw canvas ground. The genesis of these newest works could be seen in the gallery’s last exhibition (January 2020), where the artist presented a group of small, spare paintings, comprising an object against a deep navy-blue ground. In both exhibitions, we observe objects floating in an indeterminate space without weight or an obvious means of attachment giving the works the feeling of otherworldly suspension.
In these newest works, a central organic shape appears as though it was caught in the act of twisting or turning within the picture plane (if somehow activated). Bold gestural, painterly marks intercept these shapes, their velocity accentuating that feeling of rotation. Each work captures a snapshot or moment frozen in time. The works are punctuated by small Gottlieb-esque “bursts” of color that add a vibrancy within these tableaux. Sandström’s compositions seem to exist in an otherworldly realm; floating rocks against a midnight sun, they evoke a landscape devoid of horizon line, in a deep ambiguous space.
As Amy Sillman has written in a 2021 publication about Sandström’s work:
Sigrid Sandström studied at Cooper Union School of Art, New York, NY (1995); earned a BFA at Academie Minerva, Groningen, The Netherlands (1997); attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME (2000); and received an MFA in Painting from Yale University, New Haven, CT (2001). She has been awarded numerous fellowships and residencies, including at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm (2016); the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York, NY (2008); and The Core Fellowship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX (2001-03). In 2018 she was a Dora Maar Fellow in Ménerbes, France.
Sandström has exhibited widely across the United States and in her native Sweden. Recent solo exhibitions include shows at Cecilia Hillström Gallery, Stockholm (2022, 2019); Västerås Konstmuseum (2018); Kulturens Hus Luleå (2017); Galleri Gunnar Olsson, Stockholm (2018); Inman Gallery, Houston, TX (2020, 2016); Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA (2021, 2016). Sandström's work is in the public collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Borås Konstmuseum, Borås, Sweden; Malmö Konstmuseum, Malmö, Sweden, The Public Art Agency, Sweden; Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS; Västerås Konstmuseum, Västerås, Sweden, and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT. She is currently preparing for a major solo exhibition at Vandalorum, a museum of Art and Design in Värnamo, Sweden.
