Julia Adelgren
Sweden
b.1990
Julia Adelgren’s paintings are an address to the sensual, characterised by a prismatic palette-gothic purples and saccharine pinks - and a distinct use of world-building, blending the fantastical and idealistic with a quiet, earthy solipsism. Adelgren’s use of landscape is suggestively allegorical, drawn intuitively to the mythic and the ideal. Children explore sublime viewscapes and mountainous coves; trees glow magically, butterflies twinkle, shadows sparkle.
Though each work has its own distinct tableau, like chapters in a fairytale compendium, or postcards from a paradisaic destination, the same world-building thrums throughout. The works span corners of a world familiar, but unknown: sunsets rippling over pearlescent water; the sky through gnarled woods; a riverbank, heady and red. Here, the works take on a strange tense, feeling heavy with the memory of places that never existed, simulacral.
Recent exhibitions include Hesperus, Anna Bohman Gallery, Sweden, SE (2024) Roseate Nights, ADZ, Lisbon, PT (2024), ACT IV - The Balcony, Ombrella, Copenhagen, DK (2023), Dragonfly Den, MAMOTH, London, UK (2022) A Room of Ones Own, Clint Roenisch Gallery, Toronto, CA (2022).
