Sixten Sandra Österberg
”Förlorad form”
CFHill, Stockholm
Opening 11.11.21

Sixten Sandra Österberg, an MFA candidate of the Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm, is opening her much-anticipated exhibition “Förlorad form” at CFHill this week. Her large-scale portraits are created in a classic painterly tradition. Bodies and faces are carefully rendered only to be destroyed or lost as implied by the exhibition title. The deconstructive process creates space for the viewer to be absorbed by the feeling of intimate recognition and distant anonymity that goes under the skin of both object and viewer.

Sixten Sandra's compositions are often based on photographs, found or taken, but the works do not only represent one specific individual or situation. As the painting process begins, they escape the singularity of the portrait, and transform the motif to represent a shared collective experience. An approach reminiscent of the practice of fellow contemporary painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye who just recently had a major solo at Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

Through her artistic practice, Sixten Sandra activates contemporary political and social conventions. By contrasting internalized ideas about our corporeal existence with the artworks' representations of the body, her paintings question the cultural conventions of our society as well as who is made visible in public space. Incredible richness of detail, combined with layers of dissolving bodies and backgrounds, present the viewer with a complex picture. Realism and expressionism that together form an enigmatic world to get lost in.

“Förlorad form” is Sixten Sandras Österberg's first solo at CFHILL.