Fredrik Roos Art Grant 2023: Erik Uddén

About the exhibition

The grant is awarded to Erik Uddén with the following motivation:

“Erik Uddén connects finished wall fragments with different textures and materiality with plaster processing and painterly brushstrokes to new combinations, where you never really know what the harvests of chance from the material’s previous life are, and what the artist has added as a conscious act.
It is in this open situation that the viewer feels invited to a dialogue. Uddén allows his paintings to be connected to both walls, ceilings, and floors, and sometimes a few windows. In this way, the installations are part of a close dialogue with the architectural space, and thus the connection to society also feels like a natural part.”

About the artist

Erik Uddén was born in 1990 and grew up in Söderhamn, Hälsingland. He is currently both active and living in Stockholm. Uddén completed his master’s degree at Kungl. Stockholm Academy of Fine Arts 2022 and his bachelor’s degree at Malmö Art Academy in 2020. He has previously studied at Pernby’s painting school and the Art School in Gävle.

Uddén has been awarded scholarships from the Academy of Fine Arts (R. and H. Svensson’s donation fund), 2022, and Karin and Erik Engman’s scholarship in Gävle, 2018. His work has been shown at Mazettihuset in Malmö, Konstakademien in Stockholm, Sandvikens Konsthall, Bollnäs Konsthall, and Galleri Bo Bjerggaard in Copenhagen.

Uddén works with a painting that dissolves outlines between sculpture and painting, where the span frame and canvas are often used as sculptural form grips. He uses color to negotiate with and transform a variety of materials, conventional as well as unconventional. Uddén’s work examines the painting’s ambiguity as both a window and a body to navigate the room.