"Erik Uddén connects finished wall fragments with different texture and materiality with plaster treatments and painterly brushstrokes into new combinations, where you never really know what are the random harvests from the material's previous life and what the artist has added as a conscious act. It is in this open situation that the viewer feels invited to a dialogue. Uddén allows his paintings to be connected to both walls, ceilings and floors and sometimes the occasional window. In this way, the installations are part of a close dialogue with the architectural space, and thus the connection to society also feels like a natural part.”
The scholarship exhibition takes place in various locations at Artipelag, such as the entrance hall, on floor 1 and on the so-called "Björn's floor" on floor 3. The exhibition has free entry and also includes a catalogue. 2023 is the sixth year that distribution and exhibition will take place at Artipelag.
About the artist
Erik Uddén was born in 1990 and grew up in Söderhamn, Hälsingland. He is currently both working and living in Stockholm. Uddén completed his master's degree at King's College. The Academy of Arts in Stockholm in 2022 and his bachelor's degree at the Academy of Arts in Malmö in 2020. He has previously studied at Pernby's painting school and the Art School in Gävle.
Uddén has been awarded scholarships from the Art Academy (R. and H. Svensson's donation fund), 2022 and Karin and Erik Engman's scholarship in Gävle in 2018. His work has been shown at the Mazettihuset in Malmö, the Art Academy in Stockholm, Sandvikens Konsthall, Bollnäs Konsthall and Galleri Bo Bjerggaard in Copenhagen.
Uddén works with a painting that dissolves contours between sculpture and painting, where the tension frame and the canvas are often used as sculptural forms. He uses color to negotiate and transform a variety of materials, conventional as well as unconventional. In Uddén's work, the ambiguity of the painting is examined as both window and body to navigate the room.