Andreas Eriksson: Rochade

‘If I have to choose between the painting or my ideas, I always follow the painting and in that dialogue all sorts of embarrassing, lovely moments can be revealed.’ - Andreas Eriksson

De 11 Lijnen presents a solo exhibition of paintings, drawings and hand-woven textiles by Swedish artist Andreas Eriksson. Eriksson has described his tapestries as ‘existential landscapes’, an extension of painting in which the picture migrates to the linen itself. Concerning the differences in colour perception in tapestry and painting, Eriksson explains: ‘The canvas is linen and the tapestry is made with un-dyed and un-coloured linen, so the colours you see represent the differences in the soil where the flax has grown over the years. I have more than 50 kg of linen threads from the eighteenth century to today.’

Eriksson’s work hovers enigmatically between the abstract and the figurative and is simultaneously familiar and mysterious. The paintings are composed through the juxtaposition of multiple fields of colours and textures, resembling a large patchwork of murky browns, greys and greens. These earthy tones inevitably conjure associations with tree trunks, rocks, mud and foliage. But it is impossible to trace any topography, scenery or perspective in Eriksson’s paintings. Their strong hallucinatory orientation produces a disjunction, making it hard to understand which is the sky and which is the ground.