Andreas Eriksson: Work in Progress

Andreas Eriksson has worked for two years on his large painting for the main entrance of the Nya Karolinska Solna. It is here that patients and visitors get the first impression of the hospital. The tall entrance is dominated by a huge freestanding elevator shaft in the far corner. The entire front of the shaft will soon be covered by the eleven-meter-tall painting, which will be experienced from the entire length of the lobby and from various floors.

Eriksson’s main source of inspiration is landscape and nature. Through the classic technique of oil painting on canvas, his idea is to introduce a humanistic and poetic dimension into the highly technological hospital environment. On the border between the figurative and the abstract, a worried or stressed person is offered his or her own landscape to explore in a moment of quiet reflection.

The exhibition includes a model of the lobby as well as a sample of the robust ash frame, an important part of the design, which will frame the painting and continue along the concrete walls of the shaft. The twenty small paintings in acrylic on canvas, painted in the same period as the large work, are sensitive registrations of the environment around Kinnekulle, close to where Eriksson lives and works. Working in a series makes it possible for the artist to investigate what happens during the process and what kind of meaning the paintings generate. Questions like these have been relevant for the work with the large painting, which not least through its format has challenged the limits of painting.

The exhibition includes an interview where the artist talks about the commission for Nya Karolinska Solna and about his work. The Museum also shows the artistic process through a selection of the many photographs Eriksson has taken during the creation of the work to document the painterly process before it is hidden forever in the finished painting.

Andreas Eriksson (born in 1975) studied at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm and lives outside Lidköping. Apart from painting he works with sculpture, photography, film and prints. He has made public commissions for among others the Public Art Agency and AstraZeneca (Medicon Village) in Lund.

The investment in art for Nya Karolinska Solna is the largest ever for a public space in Sweden. The Public Art Agency was founded eighty years ago, in 1937. One of the Agency’s first projects was to commission art for the newly inaugurated Karolinska Hospital. Research shows that art in hospitals is a good investment for both patients and staff. The commissioner of the art for Nya Karolinska Solna is the Stockholm County Council. The architects are White Tengbom Team. Eriksson’s work will be installed in June 2017 and unveiled in the beginning of 2018.