We have the great honour of showing three artists, Lisa Jeannin, Lisa Englund and Emm Berring, in whom the transformations of nature are clearly present. They work with different practices in sculpture and installation, textiles and painting, but share a common interest in the processes of nature as a foundation in their artistic creations.
In the gallery’s project room, Lisa Jeannin in collaboration with Rolf Schuurmans present the exhibition Locus solis, a collection of sundial-like machines created to explore solar alchemy, an experimental process in which sunlight is transformed into a substance with miraculous properties, also known as the ’Philosopher’s Stone’. The machines – or sculptures – are thus as much works of art as they are experimental tools with which Lisa Jeannin studies the boundaries between science and mystique. Alongside alchemical processes, she has for many years been immersed in the ’art of spagyric’, the art of producing alchemical herbal medicine. Through extensive studies and experimentation, she has produced over three hundred spagyric elixirs from plants. The exhibition displays a selection of these in small glass bottles suspended by threads from a seven-pointed copper star, a shape said to possess planetary powers. Lisa Jeannin’s oeuvre is wide-ranging, moving between sculpture, drawing, installation and performances where reality and the cosmos merge. Lisa Jeannin holds an MFA from Malmö Art Academy. Over the years she has been commissioned with several public works as the recently inaugurated sculptures “Elementarer” at Tåtplatsen, in Malmö City (2024) and “Gäster”, Kronandalen, Luleå Municipality.
In Lisa Englund’s textile works, the nearby nature, the forest outside the door, is an important part of her work. There, in plants, mosses and fungi, are pigments she uses to dye her yarns. In the loom, the images then emerge with motifs that are bold, humorous and narrative. In her imagery she refers to both biblical myths and every day, often drastic situations. She intuitively mixes traditional pictorial elements with contemporary references, such as scenes from the Old Testament with present-day figures. Her tapestries thus contain breathtaking perspectives and bold sensuality in a fine-tuned color range. She explains how the technique of weaving offers both opportunities and limitations that create interesting challenges. Both the colors of the yarns and the texture of the warp are important elements in how the images are formed.“A picture cannot be forced into the loom”, she says. Lisa Englund received the Beckers Art Award 2025 and recently had an exhibition at Färgfabriken, Stockholm, which will be shown again at KKAM, Höganäs in Sweden from May 3, 2025. She holds an MFA from Konstfack, University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm.
In Emm Berring’s paintings the forest is as a recurring theme. Trees and trunks fill the pictorial spaces, creating intricacy and tactile patterns that give bodily associations. The sensual expression that permeates the paintings is reinforced by the seemingly synthetic color scale that tends towards green and pink, like a shimmer. In the color fields and from the natural motifs, contrasts of light and darkness emerge simultaneously, breaking through like sunlight, shadows, shafts and gaps. The disconnection of the colors from nature gives the paintings a sense of mystery and a heightened experience of the surroundings in the picture. The artist describes a working process in which nature motifs emerge from a painterly process, but in which the painterly process is also reminiscent of nature’s way of growing. The hand and brush move over the surface, adding layer after layer. It is also about exploring a kind of intermediate state that exists at the junction between the organic and the constructed, body and nature, painting and image. Emm Berring holsa an MFA from Malmö Konsthögskola and has an upcoming exhibition at Galleri Arnstedt, Östra Karup.