YLVA CARLGREN

Notions of ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’ are equally visceral in Ylva Carlgren’s watercolour meditations. The Swedish painter, who lives and works in Stockholm, grounds her practice in the in-between; moments of emptiness from which abundance may swell, remaining open to what arises when we are left with nothing.

Refinement and precise finesse are integral to Carlgren’s creative process, featuring both established and emergent techniques in her practice: traceless brushstrokes to provoke the illusion of photographic appearance, and a newer experimental style of removing dark paint from the canvas, layer by layer. Carlgren’s curiosity for the grit brings a fresh, humanist perspective to the elegant minimalism that charge her works.

“My practice is an ongoing investigation of inner space which I can only vaguely picture, the gauging of a spatiality which can only partially be sensed.” - Ylva Carlgren, 2024

For Ark Kollekt, Carlgren presents two framed watercolours on paper, Shift and Enclosed Light, and one watercolour on paper applied onto a handmade Chinese-style folding screen, Within Limits. Potent in each work is an affinity for duality and ambiguity, with Carlgren suggesting to her viewer that we can learn much by surrendering to not knowing.