The Pasticheur - Alexandra Hedberg

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Alexandra Hedberg (b.1972) is a Swedish artist working with painterly screen prints in big formats and installations. She has exhibited her artwork since 2004 in solo, duo and group shows nationally and internationally. Works by Alexandra Hedberg can be found in several public collections in Sweden, including the Västerås Art Museum, and about a dozen commissioned art pieces by her hand adorn public spaces. She participated in the Open Art Biennale for public art 2019 and the Nordic Contemporary Print Triennial 2020.

In recent years Alexandra has focused on screen printing pushing the borders of the media in big format, installations, and the idea of art as an experience. Her work deals with the human condition, existence and the futile. Using drawing as a starting point Hedberg has through the years explored her themes in different materials, techniques and medias; from screen prints, the intimate context of an artist book or projections of drawings in process to commissioned monumental wall pieces and public sculptures. Size and materiality are important tools in this exploration.

Alexandra Hedberg has a Master in Art & Technology from Gothenburg University and studied experimental colour printmaking at Atelier Contrepoint in Paris. She lives and works in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Artist's Statement

My work is at the core about the human condition, existence and the futile. During recent years the climate crises has come to affect me and my work. As a result the theme of the Apocalypse has become a framework, my art pieces being “my visions” presented in large confrontational scale; natural disasters brought on by climate change (wildfire, landslides, flood and draught), bad omens (blood rain, eclipse, dead butterflies) and consequences (people running for their life, sex as escapism, desperate love). I present my visions as glimpses of scenes to allow for the spectators to create their own narrative. Some of my art pieces might appear to be abstract when seen at distance or in small digital format. But up on closer inspection or experienced in reality, figurative elements are discovered.

The majority of my work is made in series, meant to complement each other or together create a bigger experience or installation. As I want the spectator to be emerged into my art, I work in big format and often with spatiality to create a world to enter, an immersive experience. By creating art pieces specifically for the location and space - using floor, the special light conditions and involving objects etc - the art takes over the gallery space.

My big works on paper and textile might at first glance look like paintings, but are created by using screen printing techniques in an unorthodox and experimental way. My work method means combining hand drawn and painted originals with cut paper masks and painting with inks directly in the screens while printing. At the same time I work in big size to make the process much more physical and consequently visible in the final art piece. I want the form to reflect the content; materiality and traces of the process here helping to embody it.

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More of Alexandra Hedberg’s work may be appreciated online on her website, her Instagram account, and on the Instagram account associated with this website.

For professional enquiries, please call or write:

+ 46 (0) 704 04 35 72

contact@alexandrahedberg.com

From APOCALYPSE

2019-2021
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A series of 30 large scale works on paper
Intended to be seen together in a spatial installation
(most of the works are 150 x 200 cm)
Some examples
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Both in the Bible and in secular literature apocalyptic truths are mediated through a seer and the visions are translated into images and words. This is a selection of my visions – and just as a seer I’m not telling you the whole story, but I only share some glimpses for you to interpret …

the Scream

Landslide

Here and Now

Wildfire

From Days of Laughter

Laughter is a purling, an echo, a chaplet,
a state and an act
Laughter starts from within and rises to the surface
Laughter is so simple and so complicated
Laughter can be light and laughter can be dark

– How does one embody laughter in all its complexity?

From The End of Days

Book in monumental format, 2018
screen printed monotype
24 pages
spread 4 x 1,5 m

The End of Days is like a lifestyle catalogue at the end of days. Girls are running at the beach in pretty dresses with fists clinched and strained smiles under stormy skies, the sea is dark, the four horsewomen of the apocalypse are approaching under the sun and under the moon, death is laughing lying on her back in the grass.