West Bund Art & Design

Stephen Friedman Gallery presents a group exhibition focused on landscape painting for the tenth anniversary of West Bund Art & Design.

The presentation includes the work of three artists from across the globe; Andreas Eriksson (Sweden), Sky Glabush (Canada) and Hulda Guzmán (Dominican Republic). Each artist possesses a unique approach to the depictions of the natural world. 

Andreas Eriksson is known for his meditative paintings that draw on the landscape surrounding his home in rural Medelplana, Sweden. Hovering between abstraction and figuration, Eriksson’s works can be interpreted as patchwork topographies or details of organic forms such as trees, earth and rock formations. The artist uses acrylic, egg oil tempera and oil for his compositions on canvas. In this new body of work, he adopts a palette of natural tones; greens and browns are intertwined with flakes of turquoise, reflecting fragmented landscapes. With a bird’s-eye view appearance, his largest work in the presentation, Valve (2023), features mauve and amber colours within watery and sketch-like marks.

By subverting traditional painterly archetypes, Sky Glabush presents landscapes through an historic lens. The artist uses a rigorous drawing practice to create his large-scale surreal paintings. Glabush’s paintings are mythical and romantic, yet bold lines provide a methodical and geometric approach to composition. Images of nature are for the artist “folktales retold, still capable of showing something of the real and imagined worlds we inhabit.” In Mountain Lake (2023), Glabush uses bold lines not only to create perspective and depth, but to enhance the effect of the moon’s luminosity. Heavily textured, the artist mixes sand with paint to create rough surfaces which add to bringing his imagined landscapes to physical life.

Hulda Guzmán also explores elements of surrealism within her dreamlike landscapes. The artist’s paradisal paintings echo the styles of Henri Rousseau and Paul Gauguin. Guzmán creates technicolour utopias that embrace the spirit of the natural world. Guzmán explains, “I feel that being in nature connects us to the deeper wisdom of life which is ever present and only asks to be lived and recognised within our own hearts.” The artist’s paintings nod to humanity’s role within a vast ecosystem; towering trees often dwarf her subjects, and the sun and encroaching plants evoke the power of nature.