V1 GALLERY PROUDLY PRESENTS
Hidden Beings
A solo exhibition by Sara-Vide Ericson
There is intimate tension and quiet suspense in the new paintings and drawings by Sara-Vide Ericson. We are in the woods, in the borderland between culture and nature. In beautiful and eerie tableaus Ericson takes us on a tightrope walk between the conscious and subconscious. In the painting Being Obvious (Oil on Canvas, 135 x 110 cm, 2014) a girl exits a shed shoeless in the woods. She is startled, her body caught in attentive movement. A harsh bright light hits her jacket and tears into the fibers of the jacket, the canvas and her very being. You can sense she feels a threat and the more you study the painting you realize that you could be that threat. As a viewer it is unsettling to feel the transition from passive voyeur to potential threat.
In all the new works in Hidden Beings, 10 paintings and 7 drawings, Ericson lets the viewer come close. Too close for complacent comfort. As a viewer you are either confronted by the situation or placed directly in it. The scenarios feel familiar and yet uncanny. Like a shared dream or a déjà vu. She tabs into the common uncommon. Into the darker areas of our imagination. Into the wild. The people that inhabit the paintings are both strong and fragile. At once at peace with nature and confronted by its humbling force. Nature is not a romantic environment, it is simply nature. Sara-Vide Ericson explores these different dichotomies thoroughly in the new body of work, a complicated negotiation of passion, ego, contemporary society, periphery, sense of loss, innocence, myth and empowerment.
Sara-Vide Ericson, born 1983, Sweden, lives and works in the harsh and beautiful countryside beyond Stockholm. She graduated from The Royal College of Fine Arts, Stockholm in 2009. Ericson is a masterful painter who draws on different traditions and manages to configure her own style.
She recently had solo exhibitions at Gävleborgs Länsmuseum, Sweden, and Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Sweden. Her work and process was the focus of a documentary on Swedish television (2014) by director Jacob Frössén. Her work has received critical praise and can be found in public and private collections. Hidden Beings is Sara-Vide Ericson’s first Danish solo exhibition.
