OSKAR HULT
Color, light, shadows, and nuances travel over the canvas. The paintings seem to concretize and dissolve in the very second that the paint touches the canvas. Some paintings appear to be views from a window, whereas others are a close-up study of vegetation. Some works give a hint of an indoor space, while others show clear contours of houses and facades. The world of Oskar Hult seems to be in between the past and the present, the foreground and the background, the stationary and the temporary. It is almost as if the artist refuses to be in a state of consistency. Has it to do with the conviction of painting really being a verb? That the drive is the outcome of the impressions of experiencing his paintings? Oskar Hult leaves our perceptions in the state of in between, where everything meets, and the image appears.
The motifs are possibly already imbedded in the canvas, as if the image has always presided within the framework of the stretcher. Over the flat surface of the canvas, the brushes of Oskar Hult work like a camera obscura, slowly releasing the image from its background. The sensitive painterly language of the artist is not an emotional one, it is not coated with neither romance nor melancholy. Instead, the paintings seem very rational in their uncertainty. Oskar Hult paints the space in between.
Oskar Hult (b. 1986, Linköping) is a Swedish artist based in Stockholm. He holds a MFA from the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (2017), and studied at the Academy of Arts in Vienna in (2015).
His work has been exhibited at Östergötlands Museum, Linköping; Moderna Museet, Stockholm and Malmö; Färgfabriken, Stockholm; the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm; Gallery Project Room, Helsinki; Tsukuba Art Museum, Japan; Galleri Thomassen, Gothenburg; and Arnstedt, Östra Karup; among others, as well as at Market Art Fair, Stockholm, among others.
He is the recipient of several grants, including the Linköpings konstmuseums vänner stipendium (in memory of Stefan Hammenbeck (2025), the Fredrik Roos Art Grant (2017), and the Tsukuba Art Museum Exhibition Grant (2015).
His work is held in the collections of Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Region Uppsala, Region Kalmar, Region Skåne, Region Gotland, and Norrköping Municipality, as well as in numerous private collections. Public commissions include a site-specific project for Södersjukhuset (SÖS) in Stockholm, commissioned by Kulturförvaltningen, Region Stockholm.