KRISTINA ERIKSSON

25 SEPTEMBER – 26 OCTOBER 2025

REVIEWED BY
OMKONST

SVENSKA

On the Restoration of Insignificant Things

Good artists make us see the world through their eyes. And once we’ve immersed ourselves in, for example, a sculptor’s portrayals of endlessly lonely sticks, we start seeing such sticks everywhere. Kristina Eriksson possesses this ability to elevate the seemingly insignificant. A visitor who passed by during preparations for this exhibition said: “I came in and saw the spackle patches in the gallery after the last exhibition and thought: this could be a painting by Kristina Eriksson.”

It’s as if Eriksson, in her paintings and sculptures, depicts some absolute and inviolable quality of things that demands our respect. The simpler and more insignificant, the greater. How does she manage this? “Life is a drawn–out botched job, like certain paintings,” she says. But I know no one who works as carefully and thoughtfully as Eriksson. An observation may go on for months, even years, involving deliberate restraint. To choose not to. What she calls a botched job has nothing to do with carelessness, but with nearly unachievable demands and ambitions. To not squander anything.

Because if one has been given — perhaps the only gift, according to Kristina herself — the ability to express oneself, to have been granted a language, then what should one articulate through that language? It becomes a great responsibility. Not to choose what’s easy or readily pleasing. “I feel bloody burdened – having little routine, being a bit more confident with color. I’m afraid it’ll become too beautiful, in the wrong way.”

Like the butter knife rests. “For lack of anything else, I started making butter knife rests. I had two fractures in my right arm, couldn’t do much. Maybe I saw a knife rest somewhere. Went out to the studio, thought — what should I come up with. I guess it’s that I didn’t decide in advance; it just happened. How am I supposed to assert myself in this damn art world? Do something unpretentious. It’s ridiculous, that I can do — and easily. Instead of making one, since then it becomes an art piece, I made several. Now there are 88. They’re a bit disarming. A counterforce to the aesthetic, the perfected.”

Her paintings can be like a forest — they grow and teem. Sometimes they express a roaring joy and a kind of exuberant boldness. Like Basquiat’s Hat. Yes, it really is Basquiat’s hat. And it floats above all the noise. It’s happy. And sometimes her paintings bring us as close to erasure as one can get.

Because there is a great deal of now in Kristina Eriksson’s paintings. The precise moment when we perceive something. A now that can take an eternity to portray. One that requires distance. Perhaps she exists in that enviable state, which art demands, where the individual self no longer matters. Where one can notice the small, often overlooked gestures — those that, in their smallness, point to why we are really here.

Text Eva Asp

KRISTINA ERIKSSON, b. 1948 in Stockholm, currently lives and works in Höganäs, Sweden. Kristina Eriksson holds a BFA and MFA from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, 1974. 

Kristina Eriksson’s work has been shown at Sven-Harrys konstmuseum, Stockholm; Thielska Galleriet, Stockholm; Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm; Halmstads konsthall; Konstmuseet in Skövde; Kabusa Konsthall; Galleri Sylvia Enget, Stockholm; Galleri Arnstedt, Östra Karup; Thomas Wallner, Simris and at Krognoshuset, Lund among others. 

Kristina Eriksson’s work is in the permanent collection of Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Malmö konstmuseum; Public Art Agency Sweden; Region Stockholm; Tore A Jonasson Collection, Stockholm ; Dunkers kulturhus, Helsingborg, among others.

Photo Mathias Johansson