For several years, Astrid Kajsa Nylander and Helena Lund Ek have looked at and discussed painting within the framework of project Painting Practice. Now they have explored a joint painting practice during a residency in the printmaking workshop at Konstfack. During Gallery Weekend on November 7-9, the results will be presented at ed. art.
Together, Astrid Kajsa Nylander and Helena Lund Ek run the Painting Practice project, a forum for artists where they arrange conversations, workshops, reading circles and exhibition visits to put contemporary painting in a larger context.
Over the past year, they have had the opportunity to work and create works together in Konstfack's printmaking workshop. By using the screen printing technique, often called serigraphy in the arts, they were given a literal framework to relate to while also providing space for experimentation and a process that could be repeated. It became a reflective process and a work that came to be about painting, despite the rule that the artists were not allowed to paint.
The work has been executed in a large format (100 x 75 cm) on rag paper that can withstand repeated printing. In illuminated and unilluminated frames, the duo has used the squeegee as a painterly tool to print freely and to repeat four pictorial elements:
Brush – tool for painting
Brush stroke – symbol of the painterly gesture
Grid – concept in painting and way of structuring the image surface
Circle – geometric shape and symbol
The printing process is controlled and needs to be performed quickly, while it at the same time brings surprises. The joint work has resulted in works and expressions that the two artists had not reached in their individual practices, and has opened up conversations about both conditions and discourses within painting.
Hours for Gallery Weekend Stockholm
Helena Lund Ek surrounded by the duo's serigraphs
Astrid Kajsa Nylander with the squeegee in full swing, after pushing the ink through the screen
Small frames are used to apply smaller form elements
A screen frame is being washed