Håkan Rehnberg investigates and explores in his artistic practice a unique painting technique; oil paint on sandblasted acrylic glass. A technique that has connections to American colour field painting by artists such as Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, as well as to the abstract painting of German artist Gerhard Richter.

"Som floder uppstår" (As rivers arise) is both a sculpture and a painting. In this work, Rehnberg explores spatiality and the boundaries between different artistic techniques. The work consists of sheets of acrylic glass that have been mounted upright into a rectangular form with open sides. The paint is applied unmixed onto the scraper and is only mixed when it meets the smooth surface, where different values and shadings are created, forming a colour field painting. In a long exhalation in a single stroke, the colour fades away as the pigment runs out. “As rivers arise” invites interaction and changes depending on where in the room you are positioned.

The fusion of sculpture and painting is fascinating and thought-provoking. As Rehnberg himself writes about his "spatial" works: "These works are closely connected and intertwined with my painting. The very genre affiliation has never been important to me. Both the painting and the spatial works stem from the same basic pattern. They revolve around the same elusive problems of figuration, illusion, factuality, frontality, and how the works occupy space in the room and create another type of spatiality and how the viewer is involved in this. Sometimes the works are driven towards gesture and the flat surface, sometimes the purely spatial takes over, with connections to architecture. This movement follows a rhythm where opposites merge into one another." ("Håkan Rehnberg The Sealed Studio - Asylum", 2003, p. 5).

Håkan Rehnberg has exhibited at many important institutions, both internationally and in Sweden. His career includes solo exhibitions at Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2015), Galerie Nordenhake Stockholm/Berlin (2010, 2011, 2012, 2015), Malmö Art Museum (2007), Vida Art Hall, Öland (2005), and Liljevalchs Art Gallery, Stockholm (2002). Rehnberg was nominated for the Carnegie Art Award in 2002 and represented Sweden at the Sydney Biennale in 2010. Håkan Rehnberg has been a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Fine Arts since 2000.