Henrik Samuelsson – Stega. 11 paintings together creates an paranoic puzzle.

Separate exhibition
Main hall, Färgfabriken

Stega is a special exhibition in the history of Färgfabriken. For four years, Henrik Samuelsson has worked, alone in his studio, with the eleven paintings that comprise the exhibition Stega. It is an almost heroic effort. And a statement in itself to embark on such a concentrated project over such a long period of time. And actually the first time that Färgfabriken exhibits a series of works where we were not involved at all in the dialogue surrounding the creation of the artworks.

Stega is 11 delimited images, but which are connected much like different worlds in a computer game. In each picture there is a detail that leads on to the next. This creates a form of fragmented narrative, where almost everything fits. An old wooden house from the village in Norrland where the artist grew up leads on to strange singing figures and further into space. Certainly there are traces of Samuelsson’s earlier painting and one can sense his old heroes – but now approached with a grand and painterly singing lightness. The paintings have been installed completely without walls to also create in the room the interplay between extreme detail sharpness and distance that characterizes the works.

A book of 148 pages has been produced for the exhibition. It partly presents the exhibition Stega, but also contains a longer “kind of text”, Paranoiskt pussel, by Henrik Samuelsson himself. Katarina Norling writes in the book that “Paranoid puzzle is an ironic and slightly crazy text in three parts that Henrik Samuelsson worked on in different periods over ten years”. The book also contains personally reflective texts about Henrik Samuelsson’s work and artistry by Katarina Norling and Jan Åman.