JENNY CARLSSON GRIP
EYE OF THE STORM
11 NOVEMBER–12 DECEMBER 2021
REVIEWED BY
Jenny Carlsson Grip’s powerful paintings take place in a nature that demands sensitivity. In the borderlands between the cultivated and the wild, painting picks its own paths. It builds the language, follows the trembling of the soil and detects the voice of the wind. The movement into the place, into the colour, is done with forceful tools and finely atuned instruments; brushes, scrapers, spatulas, fingertips and palms. The elements converge in the painting practice where the colour is in itself nature, a base matter that builds walls, runs in the ditches and claws towards the skies.
The walk goes into the eye of the storm, where the challenge is the greatest but the wind is still. In the midst of events new opportunities arise as rules and casualities disintegrate and is put together anew. Enormous energies roam around the center, ungraspable in their vastness but here in the middle made clear, ready to follow and act upon. It is an active place both scary and beautiful. Carlsson Grip tames it by staying put, builds its body with earthy hands and takes a step back with every brushstroke, opens the windscreens and throws herself out and follows the storm and the song of the fey to its origin.
In recent years the painting practice has moved out into the landscape that it draws upon and has by effect become more raw and direct, without a translating filter the work now resides at the center of events, in the eye of the storm.
JENNY CARLSSON GRIP was born 1984 in Ronneby, Sweden, where she lives and works today. She graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in 2013 from Umeå Academy of Fine Arts, Sweden. Her works have been exhibited at Malmö Konsthall, Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm, Kulturcentrum Ronneby konsthall, Umeå Art Museum and Kalmar Art Museum as well as Galerie Forsblom in Stockholm and in Finland.
Jenny Carlsson Grip has been granted scholarship from, among others, the Swedish Art Grants Committee, Svenska Konstnärernas Förening and Vera och Göran Agnekils Stipendium from Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts.
Jenny Carlsson Grip’s works are included in various public and international collections such as Stockholms stad, Uppsala kommun, Karlskrona kommun, Karlshamns kommun, Västerbottens museum, Blekinge museum and TIA-collections, USA and Aalto University, Finland.
