21.8 - 6.9 2025
Opening Thursday, August 21, 5-7 PM
Galleri Helle Knudsen is pleased to present Agnes Widbom’s first solo exhibition. Each year, Galleri Helle Knudsen awards several grants to promising artists in collaboration with the art society Konstsällskapet Våga Se. As a natural extension of this work, the gallery has over the years hosted numerous scholarship exhibitions, giving emerging artists the opportunity to present their work to a broad audience in a professional exhibition setting. These exhibitions have become a valued part of the gallery’s program and serve as a way to introduce new artistic voices to the art scene. Ebba Olsson, Ludvig Hyrefeldt, and Malin Östberg were three of the recipients in 2024.
Ebba Olsson, Beatrice, oil on canvas, 60 x 50 cm
Ebba Olsson (b. 1999) is a Swedish artist based in Florence. She holds a bachelor's degree in European Studies from Lund University. She has also studied art history at the University of York. After moving to Florence in 2022, she is currently training at Charles H. Cecil Studios in Florence. Her style is traditional, and she paints and draws from live models. Through her work at the school and in a traditional portrait studio, she has worked side by side with her teachers like the old masters' studios, where apprentices were trained to keep a craft tradition alive. Her interest lies in figurative oil painting and reintroducing a focus on craftsmanship in the Swedish art scene.
Malin Östberg, And then we laughed until we almost died RED, oil on MDF, 40 x 24 cm
Malin Östberg (b.1979) lives and works in Borlänge. In her artistic practice, she works with spatiality. Mostly with painting and sculpture in various materials where works interact with each other in small stagings. The body has always played a central role in her works. The physical and its presence is something she increasingly incorporates as a tool in her art. She is influenced by and draws narratives from our contemporary times, from politics, current events, but also from her own memory bank. In this way, she approaches everyday life and reality, which takes a turn from realism to surrealism and sometimes absurdity, where questions about the body and integrity, solidarity, and possibilities for freedom of choice are turned inside out. The public space as a place interests her, and the encounter between viewer and work as well as the conversations they generate are an important extension of her work.