• Linus Höj Krantz: "Finding Loopholes in a Medium with Set Rules"

    Written by Natalia Muntean

    Blending alchemical experimentation with graphic art and craftsmanship, Linus Höj Krantz, born in 1989 in Stockholm, Sweden, is an artist whose works explore themes of cycles, escapism, and environmental disruptions, often integrating unconventional techniques with traditional methods. In his latest project, Linus draws inspiration from Arlanda Airport, transforming its logistics and design elements into etched circuit boards, copper engravings, and sculptural objects that connect history with modernity.

    Discover more about the artist’s innovative approach to printmaking, the impact of being one of the four receivers of the 2024 Ann-Margret Lindell Stipendium, and the importance of creating a dialogue between art and the unnoticed systems that shape our world.

    Natalia Muntean: Your interest in unconventional methods of printmaking sets you apart. What draws you to challenge traditional boundaries in this medium?
    Linus Höj Krant:     I think perhaps the way I work around these boundaries has a lot to do with my personality. I enjoy haphazardness and a tiny bit of chaoticness, at the same time I crave boundaries and templates. Finding loopholes or possibilities to tweak a medium that has long-set rules and archetypes is just something that suits having that type of mindset. Also, I think it´s a medium that has a lot of potential to conversate with the present and its ways of transmitting images and information.

    NM: Your work often combines experimental techniques with traditional printmaking. How do you decide which techniques to integrate into a new project?
    LHK:     Accumulating techniques and finding out what works is a long and slow process, I would say. I might pick up a seed of a technique while working on a current project. Then a concept or a site or something that whispers to this technique gets added to the back of my brain and eventually, it becomes the foundation towards new work. For the last ten years, I´ve been travelling a lot by bus and train within the Nordic countries, partially because of studying in Norway, Denmark and Sweden. These constant journeys have made me subconsciously and consciously merge landscapes, energy and logistics with techniques such as electrolytic printmaking, circuit boards and sculpting found material/metal. Usually, I start a project with too many ideas, and as the project develops, I scratch and peel off what doesn´t need to be in it.

    NM: What does receiving this scholarship mean for you, both personally and professionally, and how do you see it shaping your future as an artist?
    LHK:     I think it means more than a lot. It´s a great encouragement to continue to try new and unwritten paths within my artistic process. Hopefully, it will bring more flexibility for me to spend longer periods on research and grinding new techniques.

    NM: The stipend celebrates excellence in graphic art. What do you think makes your approach to graphic art unique, and how does it align with the values of this award?
    LHK:     I guess what sets me apart could be that I´m very curious about how rare methods and artistic processes can have a dialogue with what surrounds us but often go unnoticed. Having your antennas both inside the box and outside of it, I guess resonates a lot with the ideas and core values of this incredible grant.

  • Fanny Hellgren: "Each Work is a Universe in Itself"

    Written by Natalia Muntean

    Born in 1992 in Gothenburg, Fanny Hellgren is an artist whose work bridges the ephemeral and the eternal, capturing the cycles of nature and humanity’s search for meaning. Through innovative techniques blending sand, water, and pigment, she creates mesmerising landscapes and sculptures that reflect geological processes and cosmic origins.

    This experimental approach, steeped in both scientific inquiry and mysticism, has earned her the prestigious Ann-Margret Lindell Stipendium for excellence in graphic art, making Hellgren one of the four receivers of the 2024 Ann-Margret Lindell Stipend offered by Grafikens Hus. Find out more insights about the artist’s creative process and how her art resonates with contemporary audiences navigating environmental and existential crises.

    Natalia Muntean: Your work delves into geological processes and their connection to cosmic origins. How do you think these themes of time and materiality resonate with contemporary audiences?
    Fanny Hellgren:     I think these more eternal themes that I work with are always relevant in a way. Now, when we’re in the middle of an environmental crisis, ideas of how we’re part of nature and what our role is to it resonates with many people I believe. At times of political conflicts, wars, and humanitarian crises, people tend to search for more existential and spiritual expressions.

    NM: How did you develop this method of working with sand, pigment, and water, and what challenges or discoveries have shaped it?
    FH:     I began making these works in 2020 during the pandemic when I was studying at Malmö Art Academy at the time and the school shut down suddenly. I didn’t have access to my studio anymore and this forced a turning point in my practice. I began spending a lot of time walking at the Ribersborg beach in Malmö, so I began making works outdoors using sand, stones and graphite powder to make marks on paper. The process evolved quite fast and I started using a spray gun to apply pigments mixed with water onto sand-covered papers.

    I constantly discover new directions and results within this process. One important discovery was when I started using slightly bigger grains of sand, which resulted in the contour of every grain becoming visible and imprinted on the paper. This is conceptually important for this series. When you see the works close-up they are very detailed - you can see how the grains gather as islands and how the water finds its way around the dunes. But seen from a distance this is not perceptible and instead other patterns and shades appear. It’s like each work is a universe in itself.

    NM: What does receiving the Ann-Margret Lindell Stipend mean for you, both personally and professionally, and how do you see it shaping your future as an artist?
    FH:     I’m very honoured to receive this grant. It means that I can dive deeper into my process to develop it and give myself the space in terms of time and money that is needed to take it seriously.

    NM: The stipend celebrates excellence in graphic art. What do you think makes your approach to graphic art unique, and how does it align with the values of this award?
    FH:     I have never worked in a particularly traditional way with any medium. Instead, I prefer an experimental approach to the materials I use and enjoy discovering my own unconventional techniques. My sand drawings can be defined as drawings, paintings, or graphic art and I’m glad the jury thinks my work fits in this context and may contribute to widening the definitions of what graphic art can be. It’s really a kind of printing technique I’ve developed, but without a press and with an ever-changing result.

  • Paul Fägerskiöld: Mapping the Mind through Painting

    Written by Sandra Myhrberg

    In his latest exhibition at Lützengatan, Paul Fägerskiöld unveils a new series of raw, introspective paintings. These works, featuring vertical structures on fields of color, explore the essence of image-making and the act of painting itself. Using symbolic pillars and shelves, the paintings act as blueprints of a cognitive “mind palace,” where abstract forms transform into recognizable images.

    Rooted in art history, the series draws from 18th-century Korean Chaekgeori and the Renaissance interplay between Disegno and Colore. Fägerskiöld continues to evolve his visual language, offering a fresh perspective on the relationship between form, color, and meaning.

    You work a lot with time and space. Can you elaborate on your view of the present?
    I don’t know how abstract one should be :) On one level I think of all segments of time as parts of a 4-Dimentional sculpture. Seen from a different perspective all the things we base our experience of the world on, before-after, cause-effect, history-present-future would all form an entity containing all its stages. In other words the chicken is both egg and hen at the same time, seen from this perspective In a more reality bound view the present is our experience of time passing. The interface on our journey through space-time.

    What does your working process look like?
    Like most things I work cyclical. And there are many different cycles ongoing at the same time. I constantly collect ideas, do sketches, take photos and reflect on stuff in the studio. Some of those ideas or notes from my notebook hold more than I first thought and after a couple of years they start to connect to other ideas and it becomes necessary to investigate them more. This is done by doing a lot of “bad” paintings and sketches, trying to reach past the initial often to literal idea. Sometimes there is more. Sometimes I find something along the way, a sketch or an idea that breaks what I had initially intended and opens up for something more interesting. In a later face of that cycle I start to make choices regarding what that work asks for in terms of scale, presentation, color etc. And if I ́m working on an upcoming exhibition those choices also relate to the works as a group, what do they add to each other, to the exhibition space, to the viewer passing through the space and while doing so moving through different modes of perception. Once the exhibition is up that cycle continues with reflection, finding new questions and points of curiosity and developing the work from where it was presented in the exhibition.

    Can you describe the materials and techniques you use?
    Generally I have been using traditional medias for painting such as oil-paint, gesso, graphite, acrylic on linen. But there is no conceptual block in my work, if the work would ask to be done completely different I would follow. In regards to technique, all the bodies of work I have done has asked for their own way of being made, which often has been very difficult to figure out. Some works has been made with brush, some with spray cans pressed in the wrong way. This show has been done only using cloth and paper to rub layers of paint onto the surface and then remove it, leaving thin layers of residue. And the drawing part of the paintings has been made over layers as well, almost carving into the linen using a graphite-pen. In the end, paint has been caught in the valleys made by the drawing, making the lines both graphite and paint.

    What is your relationship with time?
    Like most people I’m a mortal human being passing through space time just trying to make sense of it. 

    I once attended one of your vernissages. There were many layers, and it smelled of paint. Are you often working up to the last minute? How do you decide when a painting is “complete”?
    Working towards an exhibition is a quite specific experience and process. It has become a point of total focus for me, I constantly make choices and learn what it is I ́m doing while doing it. The presence and the focus often demands unexpected things from me in terms of finishing the works, they often develop exponentially the last weeks leading up to the show, but even if most of the works are done 2 weeks before the exhibition the last 3-4 paintings that arrive to the exhibition might completely change the direction and the focus of the show. A work is finished when it holds its own ground, when it asks no more of me. When there is nothing I could do to make it find itself. Most of the time the paintings are not as I had thought or intended and part of my work is listening to the work and hearing what it asks for. An unfinished or failed work works the same way.

    What drives your artistic practice?
    I have for as long as I can remember asked myself questions about transformation and change, trying to make sense of how we create meaning and understanding in the world we live in. Those questions still drive my practice. But on a less cerebral level curiosity, fear, joy and necessity/urgency drive what I do. When something really intrigues me, it tends to be a good direction to go towards, if it at the same time feels a bit scary and fun it tends to be something worth investigating. Or when something feels completely necessary to do even if the arguments are lacking.

    Your latest works are described as “cognition maps” or “blueprints of a mind palace.” How do you see the relationship between your inner thoughtsand the visual language in your paintings?
    In some regard this show is the result of work I have done over the last two years, thinking about what it would look like painting the creative process itself. But hopefully its more archetypal than just my inner thoughts. I think of the different bodies of work in the show as investigating different modes of cognition. It started with thinking about Matisse’s painting the Red Studio and asking myself how it would work if I painted it. Making a painting of my actual studio felt completely irrelevant, but making a painting of the “mind-space” where I can see all my works at the same time and reflect on the language they all create together made more sense. At the same time I had sketches and notes for memory palaces that had accumulated over the last 6+ years. In cognitive research consciousness is divided into three parts. Perception that deals with the present. Cognition that represent memory and experience, making sense of the new impressions. And Prediction that takes us into the future. We live in a blend between these three nodes. In my work I started to relate the structures or Memory Palaces to the cognition part of this triad. The more abstract small works in the show, using the outline of my previous landscape paintings became a form in which I address perception in itself. Instead of depicting a specific image, scene or landscape, the paintings are interfaces between the world and the perceiving mind, before having made sense of it. The only painting in the show representing Prediction is the painting Tomorrow, it is one of the first paintings I made thinking about this show.

    Your work often engages with art history, from Renaissance debates to Korean Chaekgeori. How do these historical references shape your creative process?
    I think we as artists (and everyone else) live and work in a shared language, we add our part and play with, correspond to colleagues that were alive long ago in different parts of the world, at the same time as we participate in discussions with artist still not born (hopefully). It is difficult to answer how it shapes my creative process since I cant stand outside of it. It is a tremendous freedom and joy being in dialogue with artists and works I have thought much about. Since I come from a family of artists it has been my experience all along, we take up somebody’s idea, do something with it, and pass it back. Much like Jazz. Sometimes that idea is found within the family, sometimes in a different time on the other side of the world and sometimes somewhere completely unexpected.

    Your paintings use monochrome hues as a base.
    How does the use of color—or its absence—impact the meaning of your work? I generally strive to have the work be as clear and precise as possible, if it is necessary to add colours and make the work polychrome, I do so. But with specifically the Memory Palaces in the show the structure of them has demanded less action in the paint, otherwise the result has been to chaotic and lacking focus. Even if a painting is perceivably a monochrome I very seldom use one colour to make it. The green Memory Palaces in the show for instance are made with at least four different colours of green, one layer going to very warm yellowish green and one layer towards turquoise. In the end the differences in layers is difficult to notice but the end result is much more vibrant and alive than a monochrome done with the same color.

    2024 Paul Fägerskiöld / Nordenhake
    Mind Palace
    On view 09.11 – 21.12.2024

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