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Artist: Niklas Eneblom

Galleri Magnus Karlsson presents Niklas Eneblom’s eighth solo exhibition at the gallery.

Why Can’t There Be a Mountain on the Horizon features a new series of paintings made on drafting film. The works of the exhibition have an evocative and dreamy nature. As the title suggests, it alludes to a longing for something else. Eneblom looks back at previously visited places, and events from the past. In the process he rediscovered the drafting film as surface to apply paint upon:

”I’m familiar with this material since my days as a technical college graduate. A couple of years after high school I made drawings for freezers at Electrolux and trucks at Volvo. I also remember how it felt to make my own drawings on the film, instead of the constructions I was expected to do. Drafting film is a synthetic semi-transparent material, which, unlike the canvas or panels, has zero suction capacity, which leads to a different kind of painting technically.”

Many of the motifs in the paintings are based on events from the artist’s own past. In each work there is a personal story that is part of a larger context. Some of the images are inspired by travels in the United States in the early 1990s, depicting a quest of a young person. There are also content that derives from visits to sites related to American politics and history, such as the siege of the Davidian ranch in Waco in Texas 1993. One painting of a horse turns out to be a portrayal of Comanche, the sole U.S. survivor in the Battle of Little Bighorn 1876. The exhibition deepens the recognizable cinematic quality of Eneblom’s work.

A larger group of portraits are also presented in the exhibition. For a long time Eneblom has collected portrait photos of, to him, unknown persons. He has found them in different ways, on streets in various cities, and piled them in his studio with an idea that they must mean something. In Why Can’t There Be a Mountain on the Horizon the portrayed are given a context and a new meaning, both as viewers and motifs.

The expression and content of the new paintings are amplified by their materiality. The layers of oil paint – both as thin membranes and pasty details – on the transparent and misty substrate is reminiscent of how time processes and distorts our memories. Some things remain clear and others become scrambled and difficult to grasp.

“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place. Nothing outside you can give you any place […] In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got.”

–Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)

Niklas Eneblom was born 1964 in Arvika, Sweden. He lives and works in Stockholm and Sandviken, Sweden. Educated at Valand Academy of Fine Arts, Gothenburg, Sweden. Solo exhibitions (selection): Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm, Sweden (1997, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2018), Arnstedt, Östra Karup, Sweden (2010), Galleri Thomassen, Gothenburg, Sweden (2007, 2009, 2018), Christina Wilson, Copenhagen, Denmark (2008), Konstforum, Norrköping, Sweden (2006), Galleri 54, Gothenburg, Sweden (2000), Galleri Rotor, Gothenburg, Sweden (1991, 1995). Represented in the following collections (selection): Sammlung Goetz, München, Germany, Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden, Norrköpings Konstmuseum, Sweden, Västerås Konstmuseum, Sweden, Public Art Agency Sweden, SAS and private collections in Europe and USA.