Viewing Room Main Site

Susanne Gottberg: By Hiding Revealed

January 26-February 18, 2024

Text and image

Susanne Gottberg

Here and There and Everywhere, 2023

Oil on wood

88 x 75 cm / 35 x 30 in

The imagery in Susanne Gottberg’s (b.1964) paintings comprises quiet, tense moments and situations where something has just departed or will soon occur. In recent years, Gottberg has shifted from depicting nature and sceneries to interiors, examining different elements of furniture, studying fabrics and details of patterns. Gottberg challenges the viewer to experience emptiness and the expectations that come with it.

Susanne Gottberg graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1989, and held her debut exhibition in Helsinki that same year. She received the Finnish Art Society’s Ducat Prize in 1991 and was elected Young Artists of the Year in 1994. Gottberg’s works can be found in a number of major Finnish public and private collections.
 

Viewing Room VoW

Susanne Gottberg’s paintings take us on a meditative journey into a complex dominion of sensory impressions and emotional states. Her art travels non-linear paths into spatially born dimensions of reality that waver somewhere between abstraction and representation. Her paintings possess a multidimensional spatiality that acts as a mirror, throwing back the viewer’s reflection, yet the world in which her art resides is within the hermetic reality of the painting. Her art builds bridges between painted space and the surrounding physical space, yet the space paradoxically exists only upon the painted surface.

 

 

Susanne Gottberg’s latest paintings continue her exploration on spatiality. Gottberg’s paintings create spaces in which time collapses and reality itself is densified. Overlapping realities coexist in her paintings, some obscured, some reflected, some multiplied. The world they inhabit appears to have lost its connection with its original time and place. Sometimes the space is literally multiplied as a painting within a painting. 

Viewing Room VoW

Susanne Gottberg

Repeated, 2023

Oil on canvas

170 x 90 cm / 67 x 35 in

SGOT_214

inquire

Susanne Gottberg

Repeated, 2023

Oil on canvas

170 x 90 cm / 67 x 35 in

SGOT_214

inquire

Susanne Gottberg

Overpass, 2023

Oil on canvas

122 x 86 cm / 48 x 34 in

SGOT_217

inquire

Susanne Gottberg

Overpass, 2023

Oil on canvas

122 x 86 cm / 48 x 34 in

SGOT_217

inquire

Susanne Gottberg

In A Small Place, 2022

Oil and pencil on wood

63 x 40 cm / 25 x 16 in

SGOT_222

inquire

Susanne Gottberg

In A Small Place, 2022

Oil and pencil on wood

63 x 40 cm / 25 x 16 in

SGOT_222

inquire

Susanne Gottberg

Dazzled, 2023

Oil and pencil on wood

85 x 61.50 cm / 33 x 24 in

SGOT_221

Susanne Gottberg

Dazzled, 2023

Oil and pencil on wood

85 x 61.50 cm / 33 x 24 in

SGOT_221

Susanne Gottberg

The Beginning or the End of a Journey, 2023

Oil on canvas

155 x 130 cm / 61 x 51 in

SGOT_246

inquire

Susanne Gottberg

The Beginning or the End of a Journey, 2023

Oil on canvas

155 x 130 cm / 61 x 51 in

SGOT_246

inquire

Susanne Gottberg

Wanderer, 2023

Oil on canvas

140 x 120 cm / 55 x 47 in

SGOT_211

inquire

Susanne Gottberg

Wanderer, 2023

Oil on canvas

140 x 120 cm / 55 x 47 in

SGOT_211

inquire

Gottberg’s paintings invite us to step into a reality of simultaneous spaces and parallel truths. The spaces she invokes can be found both within the viewer and within every atom around us. In an exalted register, Gottberg shows us how a painting can pose a question to which it is impossible to find an answer.

Large image

Susanne Gottberg

Window, 2023

Oil and pencil on wood

40 x 28 cm / 16 x 11 in

SGOT_220

Gottberg paints mysteries that invite us to reflect on fundamental questions of existence. Encountering her work forces us to slow down and engage in a quiet moment of meditation. Her paintings insist that we not only look, but also listen, accepting that the mystery only deepens over the passage of time.

In Gottberg's paintings the process continues its life from one work to the next: first, there is an interpretation and a reproduction, after which the subject expands and goes off in search of new paths. Finally, we arrive at a point where the process itself becomes the subject, constituting everything. The contours melt into the background, expanding and coalescing with reality.

Viewing Room VoW

Susanne Gottberg

As The Wind Goes Through, 2023

Oil and pencil on canvas

Diptych à 50 x 41 cm

SGOT_226

inquire

Susanne Gottberg

As The Wind Goes Through, 2023

Oil and pencil on canvas

Diptych à 50 x 41 cm

SGOT_226

inquire

Susanne Gottberg

Behind The Scene, 2023

Pencil on wood

39 x 18 cm / 15 x 7 in

SGOT_227

inquire

Susanne Gottberg

Behind The Scene, 2023

Pencil on wood

39 x 18 cm / 15 x 7 in

SGOT_227

inquire

Susanne Gottberg

Sheltered, 2023

Oil and pencil on wood

31 x 18 cm / 12 x 7 in

SGOT_228

inquire

Susanne Gottberg

Sheltered, 2023

Oil and pencil on wood

31 x 18 cm / 12 x 7 in

SGOT_228

inquire

Susanne Gottberg

In Two Ways, 2023

Pencil on wood

31 x 18 cm / 12 x 7 in

SGOT_229

inquire

Susanne Gottberg

In Two Ways, 2023

Pencil on wood

31 x 18 cm / 12 x 7 in

SGOT_229

inquire

Susanne Gottberg

Whenever Something Is No Longer Present, 2024

Oil on canvas

155 x 92.50 cm / 61 x 36 in

SGOT_233

inquire

Susanne Gottberg

Whenever Something Is No Longer Present, 2024

Oil on canvas

155 x 92.50 cm / 61 x 36 in

SGOT_233

inquire

Large image 2

Susanne Gottberg

Traveling Light, 2024

Oil on canvas

170 x 90 cm / 67 x 35 in

SGOT_232

回到顶部