Emergence – 23 May to 20 June 2024 – Hudiksvallsgatan 8, 2nd floor – Open Tuesday–Friday 11–18, Saturday 12–16 and by appointment
ABOUT the artist
Johannes Heldén (b. 1978 in Stockholm) holds an MFA from Valand Academy of Fine Arts, Gothenburg (1999–2004). He was the IASPIS artist-in-residence at ISCP, New York, in 2018–19, the recipient of the Åke Andrén Art Prize in 2015, and the project Evolution (in collaboration with Håkan Jonson) won the inaugural N. Katherine Hayles prize in 2014. Heldén has exhibited extensively, both in Sweden and internationally, with recent solo exhibitions at Varbergs Konsthall (2020), Judiska Museet C/O Textilmuseet in Borås (2018), Konstakademien in Stockholm (2018), and Kunsthall Trondheim (2017). Recent group exhibitions include Uppsala Art Museum, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2022–23), ARKEN Museum of Modern Art (2021–22), MSU Broad Museum in East Lansing (2021), Malmö Konstmuseum (2020), Bonniers Konsthall (2019), Fiskars Village Art & Design Biennale (2019), and the Desert X biennale in Coachella Valley (2019).
Heldén is represented in the collections of Moderna Museet, Malmö Art Museum, Borås Art Museum, Public Art Agency Sweden, Stockholm konst, Region Västra Götaland and Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation. He is a fellow of the MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, Hawthornden Castle, among others.
ABOUT the exhibition
We are proud to present Johannes Heldén’s second solo exhibition, Emergence, featuring watercolour collages and a video installation. The new project includes a continuation of the glossary started in Astroecology – Heldén’s praised multidisciplinary project from 2016, featuring a book, video, performance and digital works.
Heldén is a master of observation, capturing all aspects of experiencing change. His careful depictions of roots and leaves in the series of watercolour collages, or the glossary describing different aspects of nature and life through the words of an unknown author, carefully depicts a world like ours, ruined, or rather, changed into something different.
Working with themes like ecology, science fiction and sentience, Heldén’s poetry and visual elements explores a world in a near future, very close to our own. With tenderness and a sense of nostalgia, Heldén never loses track of the personal perspective in his works, exploring the bigger picture of climate change, the power of nature to evolve and the somehow comforting feeling that the world will move forward with or without us.
Sentience is a recurring theme in Heldén’s work, infusing his practice in a vivid and relatable sense. The watercolour work Chester’s Lace comes to life with its mutated layers of leaves and sprouts, as does Rain Garden which seems to hold a world of its own. In Heldén’s version of the future, there is comfort in knowing that whatever happens to humanity, the wonder of nature is always present, even in the hardest of realities.
ABOUT the Gallery
Cecilia Hillström Gallery was founded in 2012 in the gallery district at Hudiksvallsgatan in Stockholm and is owned and managed by Cecilia Hillström. Since its inception, the gallery has established itself as one of the leading galleries on the Scandinavian contemporary art scene. The gallery works with well-established and emerging artists and is committed to long-term representation. After the relocation to a larger space in the same district in 2019, the program has expanded and the gallery now presents 10–12 curated exhibitions each year.
Artists represented by the gallery are frequently engaged in solo and group exhibitions and surveys in Sweden and internationally. Recent important exhibitions are Anna-Karin Rasmusson and Per Wizén at Malmö Konstmuseum, Lovisa Ringborg at Pro Artibus in Finland, Per Wizén at Moderna Museet in Malmö, Tova Mozard and Mats Hjelm at House of Sweden, Washington DC, Carl Boutard and Kristina Matousch at Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art in Lund, Sweden, Linda Hofvander at Thielska Galleriet, Stockholm, Carl Boutard at the Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland, and Sigrid Sandström at Bonniers Konsthall and Västerås Konstmuseum, Sweden, to name a few.
Cecilia Hillström Gallery has over the years successfully launched emerging Swedish artists like Johan Bergström Hyldahl, Leif Engström, Katja Larsson, David Molander and Linnea Rygaard. At the same time, it represents artists who over their careers have exhibited at prominent Nordic institutions such as Moderna Museet, Borås Konstmuseum, Norrköpings Konstmuseum and Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway, as well as at international institutions such as Whitechapel Gallery, London, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Walker art Center, Minneapolis, PS1 and Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York.
The gallery’s strong relationship with major institutions and museums as well as private collectors is key in its ability to support and promote its artists. Working with artists who uses a large variety of media, the gallery is also engaged in public projects as well as art projects in the real estate sector. In addition, the gallery frequently presents its artists at Nordic art fairs such as MARKET, Stockholm, and CHART in Copenhagen. Furthermore, Cecilia Hillström Gallery has participated in art fairs in Barcelona, Vienna, and Istanbul.
Cecilia Hillström Gallery is a member of the Swedish Gallery Association. Cecilia Hillström has been the chairman of the gallery association as well as a board member of the Friends of Moderna Museet.
Cecilia Hillström Gallery
info@chgallery.se
https://chgallery.se/