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22.08.05. Wetterling Gallery – Natalia Edenmont
Wetterling Gallery – Natalia Edenmont – Eternal Seduction – May 19 to August 06, 2022 – Kungsträdgården 3 – Open Tue. to Fri. 11 to 5.30 pm, Sat. 1 to 4 pm
ABOUT the artist
Probing and provocative, the elaborately staged photographs of Natalia Edenmont explore fundamental themes such as birth, death, womanhood, sex, beauty, and decay. Juxtaposing opposing subjects and aesthetics, Edenmont’s work is underpinned by a tension between painting and photography, abstraction and figuration, attraction and repulsion. In dramatic compositions that display almost baroque love of excess, she has addressed taboo subjects such as menstruation and miscarriage, pointing up the double standards and repression of individuality in western society. Edenmont has said: “I paint with a photographic lens”. Her abstract butterfly works, employing thousands of butterfly wings painstakingly collaged onto a surface, evoke the joyful colours of Kandinsky and the gestural freedom of the German Expressionists. Besides butterflies, Edenmont has used natural materials such as beetles, flowers and vegetables, presenting them in masse as lavish sculptural costumes for her models in a fusion of portraiture and still life genres. In these works the artist draws on childhood memories, her own experiences, art historical iconography and popular culture to create arresting, sumptuous images in which the theme of Vanitas is inherent.
Born in Yalta, Crimea, 1970, Edenmont trained at State Art School of Kiev, Soviet Union, Simferopol State Art School, Crimea, and Forsberg’s International School of Design, Stockholm, Sweden. Her work has been exhibited throughout Europe and the United States and can be found in private and public collections globally including the Modern Museum Stockholm, Miami Art Museum and Moscow House of Photography Museum among others. In February 2014, Swedish public television broadcast a one hour documentary about Edenmont and her work. Edenmont has lived in Sweden since 1991.
http://nathaliaedenmont.com/
ABOUT the exhibition
Wetterling Gallery is proud to invite you to Nathalia Edenmont’s exhibition Eternal Seduction.
Nathalia Edenmont’s work centers around a fascination for beauty and the thin line between life and death. Nature is an important source of inspiration, both as a starting point for her artistic process as well as a source of working materials. In Eternal Seduction Edenmont presents a new series of photographic images where the originals are collages created from thousands of meticulously assembled butterfly wings.
“It takes me three years to finish this collage and I can finally shoot it with my analogue large format camera. The final photo is so magnetized every structure of the butterfly wing is visible – it feels like I’m getting close to the butterfly’s soul. By mirroring the photo in two identical images, the merge in the middle becomes magic – a new creature is awakened. I have created a powerful beast.”
- Nathalia Edenmont, 2022
Nathalia uses an analog large-format Sinar camera to get the highest possible image quality, which allows her to enlarge the image hundreds of times. The result is an abstract work with painterly qualities. By multiplying and then mirroring these photos against each other, Edenmont finds new complex motifs within her own imagery. The abstract works are reminiscent of kaleidoscopes and Tibetan mandalas. The artworks also have references to the butterfly’s symbolic significance for rebirth and reincarnation, where Edenmont allows new abstract creatures to emerge. As an extension of the exhibition, Eternal Seduction is accompanied by a publication featuring two essays by writers and art critics James Putnam and Jean Wainwright. Both essays can be found below.
Born in Yalta, Crimea, 1970, Edenmont trained at State Art School of Kiev, Soviet Union, Simferopol State Art School, Crimea, and Forsberg’s International School of Design, Stockholm, Sweden. Her work has been exhibited throughout Europe and the United States and can be found in private and public collections globally including the Modern Museum Stockholm, Miami Art Museum and Moscow House of Photography Museum among others. In February 2014, Swedish public television broadcast a one hour documentary about Edenmont and her work. Edenmont lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden.
Essay ‘Eternal Memories’ By Jean Wainwright
Essay ‘The Butterfly Effect’ By James Putnam
ABOUT the gallery
Wetterling Gallery is one of the leading galleries for contemporary art in Scandinavia, with a dynamic program of both highly internationally acclaimed artists, and young upcoming artists from Sweden. With a unique and playful entrance to the art world, Wetterling Gallery stands for quality and relevance in the present. We make art available for a curious audience.
Founded in 1978, we consider ourselves a long-term partner for our artists, collectors, institutions and the general public that plays a significant role for the development of the both the local and the international art scene. With a history of bringing international artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist and Frank Stella to Sweden we are today also presenting Swedish artists to the international art scene. Our vision is to provide a platform for dialogue and meetings between different forms of artistic expression, and between people.
The gallery arranges six exhibitions annually in the main space in Stockholm, and around the same number in the project space that was inaugurated in 2015, allowing the gallery program to be more dynamic. Wetterling Gallery also have a showroom in Gothenburg, where a curated selection of our collections is shown on regular basis.
Please note that out exhibition program is researched and developed well in advance and we are unable to accept unsolicited approaches for meetings, exhibitions or projects.
https://www.wetterlinggallery.com/