Cecilia Edefalk’s art always deals with the relationship between photography, painting and the existential qualities of the observing eye. She oscillates between portrait and mirror image, archetype and icon, and between original and replica. The motifs are repeated in order to give the images greater impact and highlight the distinctive features of each painting. As a result, ‘Venus II’ has several ‘sister’ paintings. Rather than any of the images being the first or last in the series they form an entity together, typical of Edefalk’s working process.

Repetition of the same motif is nothing new in art. On the contrary, within Western art history repetition and appreciation of the ‘original’ has a long tradition, which is particularly true when it comes to religious art. This awareness of the sacred also emerges in Edefalk’s work. During the 2000s she became interested in the imagery of classical antiquity. Edefalk’s series often reference popular culture whereas here she reacts to art and religion from thousands of years ago: Venus – the classical female figure whose shape has inspired artists throughout time, from Botticelli to Man Ray, Matisse to Yves Klein.

Edefalks light-coloured paintings play with daylight and the observer’s gaze. Edefalk is skilful in using the structure of the canvas, combining rough areas with thin layers of light colours that give a weightlessness and luminosity to the motifs. At the same time, the sparseness of colour puts the focus on the practice of painting.

Cecilia Edefalk’s suite of light-coloured paintings with classical motifs have been exhibited at, for example, the former Galleri Brändström & Stene in Stockholm, Gothenburg Museum of Art, as well as in the Kunsthalle Kiel, which showed her exhibition ‘Cecilia Edefalk, in der Antikensammlung der Kunsthalle zu Kiel’ in 2007. Edefalk’s video installation ‘24-Hour Venus’ (2009) was shown in the exhibition ‘Vita Lögner’ at Medelhavsmuseet in Stockholm during the winter of 2011. The figure, a Venus sculpture, remained static, fixed on the screen whilst, depending on the hour of the day, light moved like brushstrokes across it.