7 February - 28 February 2026
Opening Saturday 7 February 12-16
Björn Krestesen celebrates 50 years as an artist. During his long and productive career, he has held about 140 solo exhibitions and participated in around 150 group exhibitions. His works are represented in significant collections and museums, including the National Museum in Stockholm, the Bernadotte Collections, the British Museum, NAPA in Greenland, the National Museum of Art in Guatemala, and the China Printmaking Museum in Guanlan.
In his artistic work, he continues to explore archetypal forms of expression that he developed during the 1980s and 1990s. He experiences these expressions as still alive and capable of development in the phase of life and creation he is now in. Objects and shapes carry stories for him – traces of human presence, experiences, and events. His artistic drive is the search for the yet uncomprehended, that which has not yet allowed itself to be expressed.
Björn Krestesen was born in 1951 in Nacka. He was educated at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, 1974–1979.
I wish to find keys during my working process, keys with which I can open new doors and thereby enter a world I have not been in before. Thus, I also hope to begin a conversation with myself consisting of an alphabet I have not previously used. Slowly, slowly I adapt to the new conditions.
With age, I trust the content and only control the form, until the image responds and says: "Okay, let me go now." It is now a full 50 years since I was admitted to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts’ five-year education. Earlier I sought the violently expressive, now I search in the unnoticed, restrained calm. I try patiently to wait for myself to find the continuation of the winding path I began in 1974. I have always carried a strong belief in the importance of art in our fellowship. If we do not dare to meet the new, that which we do not yet fully master, we only end up repeating what we already know – then we lose curiosity, and that makes us poorer.
Keep the key of curiosity before new experiences: listen, take in, chew and swallow, and humbly feel the energy from the unexpected. Step onto new grounds; dare to fail, not only within the realm of art. It is never only the subject that determines the commitment to life, but the need and will to say something. It is important to interpret an experience and claim something based on it.
"It’s a crack in the darkness – that’s how the light comes in," writes Leonard Cohen. I keep my eyes firmly open to discover just that crack, the one that lets in the light and thus life’s possibilities. - Björn Krestesen
Review by Victoria Engholms in connection with the exhibition at Apotekshuset, Sollefteå: Björn Krestesen’s art is not about subjects in the traditional sense, but about movement – the pendulum between decay and construction. The materials themselves test different ways to hold together: rope, sticks, straps, veneer, layers of paint. And at the same time, the music is there – in the rhythms, in the recurring shapes. Sometimes I hear Japanese tones, sometimes strings building a symphony. It is impossible to resist the tones that emerge in the creative constructions that make up many of his subjects.
Björn Krestesen, The Altar Piece of Transcendence, mixed technique on wood, 100 x 121 cm, 2025