October 8 - October 30, 2026
A Place in the Sun is Tomas Gustavsson’s third solo exhibition at Galleri Helle Knudsen and presents new paintings inspired by nature and the surroundings of his studio.
The motifs take their starting point in reality - in environments where the artist himself has been - but through painting they become memories, shifted and transformed. The process begins with depiction and then moves on to the image gradually being dismantled and almost completely erased. Right there, on the edge of disappearance, a way into the painting opens up - a turning point and a new construction.
Time is present in the images through sundials, tally marks, and various grid and calendar patterns. At the same time, however, time seems to lose its direction. The concrete moment and specific place where the painting begins give way to something more elusive. In the process of depicting, breaking down, and rebuilding the image, Gustavsson enters a state where time and space seem to cease to exist.
As part of his process, Gustavsson primes the canvases with a coarse layer of reddish-pink oil paint. Later in the process, when he scrapes and cuts into the painting, the ground color emerges. The colors and light thus mingle with the underlying layers and create new connections.
Tomas Gustavsson was born in 1958 and lives and works in Västerås. He studied at
Västerås Art School and Konstfack in Stockholm. Gustavsson has previously exhibited at Galleri Helle Knudsen in 2017 and 2023. He has held solo exhibitions at, among others, Galleri Magnus Karlsson in Västerås and Stockholm, Galleri Wallner in Malmö, and Galleri KAZ in Västerås. He has participated in group exhibitions at, among others, Västerås Art Museum, Ebeling Museum, and Katrineholm Art Gallery.
>> See all works by Tomas Gustavsson
