Untitled
Signed Håkan Rehnberg and dated 2005 verso. Oil on acrylic glass 150 x 135 cm.
Minor wear with occasional scratches.
Sivert Oldenvi Collection
In Håkan Rehnberg’s art, rigour and sensuality, control and unpredictability converge. For several decades, he has explored the most fundamental conditions of painting: colour, surface, gesture and the moment at which an image comes into being. On the smooth acrylic glass, the oil paint encounters a surface offering minimal resistance. The paint can be moved across the surface, scraped, built up and left behind as traces of an action.
Rehnberg’s abstraction does not seek motifs behind the image. Instead, painting itself becomes an event in which the visible is constantly balanced against what remains withheld. Fields of colour overlap, break apart and conceal one another. The surface opens up and closes again.
Håkan Rehnberg is one of Sweden’s leading artists. He lives and works in Stockholm and has, for several decades, developed a form of painting that combines formal precision with a strong interest in the possibilities of colour and sensuality.
Rehnberg has developed a distinctive technique using oil paint on acrylic glass. By replacing the traditional canvas with acrylic glass, he transforms the physical qualities of painting. The material’s lightness and transparency emphasise the open and fluid character of his works.
His art can be related to the American Color Field tradition, with artists such as Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, as well as to the abstract painting of Gerhard Richter. Colour plays a central role in Rehnberg’s work, used both to reveal and conceal. His paintings thus move between the visible and the hidden, inviting questions about what we actually see.
Rehnberg has exhibited extensively in Sweden and internationally and has been a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts since 2000.
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