JUDIT KRISTENSEN
1990, From Sweden, works in Belgium
Even though there appears to be an auto biographical line in Judit Kristensens works, the works does not seem like depictions of surroundings but rather like implemented inner visions or staged scenes, like a stifled theather with pent-up drama and uncertain fate. The works let the viewer peek into uncanny private spheres with an underlying threat, and Netflix, Coca Cola bottles and previous days Cheerio bowls. There seems to be an existential core in the works, and recurring attempts to charge the mundane with emotional tension. The isolationist gloom, the thrembling interiors and psychologically loaded private rooms with an absinth green screen lighting that makes the cold pink vibrate, appears to pick up on a tradition left by Scandinavian modernists such as Edvard Munch, Vera Nilsson and Vilhelm Hammershøi.
Judit Kristensen (b. 1990, Sweden) lives in Antwerp and has a master in fine art from Umeå Art Academy. She has previously been part of group exhibitions in Plus-One Gallery in Antwerp, Eighteen Gallery in Copenhagen, Diskus in Aalst and Bildmuseet in Umeå, and had solo exhibitions at Plus-One Gallery in Antwerp and Artipelag in Stockholm. She was the 2022 awardee of the Fredrik Roos grant, the highest awarded art grant in Scandinavia, and has been awarded grants from Eva and Hugo Bergman Foundation through Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm, the one year working grant from The Swedish Arts Grants Committee, KiK through Örnsköldsviks Konsthall and Samartbete through Galleri Syster. Judit Kristensen’s works are part of public collections through the Soho House Collection, Trädgården Stockholm, Umeå Municipality, Skellefteå Municipality, Luleå Municipality and through the Public Art Agency of Sweden.
“... Yoghurt and wine. Solid fields and pourous ones. Flatness and depth. Sheets and bedroom curtains... I know Judit Kristensens rooms. The psychology, the vibes. No, I don’t know the rooms, I have never been there, they are not my rooms, although I actually long for them.
Details turn into paintings. Turquoise, green, a little red, yellow. The air trembles, the screen trembles. Complementary colors, synonymous colors, the colors vibrate. Fade. Are pale. Perhaps nervous. It’s intimate. I’m inside someone’s bedroom, lying next to, looking over the shoulder at the screen. What am I doing there? Why was I invited here?...”
Lisa Torell, Post Doc Artistic researcher UiT
“...It is hard to identify traces from the Umeå Art Academy in her work and even harder to discern any professorial influence. Judit Kristensen appears as a highly individual artist, with no traces linking to her site of training. In fact, her artistic practice does not even feel Swedish. It rather appears as if it could have sprung from anywhere in the world. It would be interesting to know if her painting changed when she moved to Antwerp. I suspect not. And the reason for that may be because her paintings are not primarily representations of a physical reality but rather more depictions of inner emotional states.”
Bo Nilsson, Museum Director, Artipelag
“…Poised between phenomenological rituals and capitalist violence, sleep and dream, hysteria and catalepsy, the actors animated by Judit Kristensen’s vital and creative drive, thoroughly examining the physiological and psychological parameters of this inner, translucent theater, they seem to swim with difficulty finding their way among the rarefied remnants of an authentic reality with an uncertain future.
Judit Kristensen, making use of the vanitas, gives us the most intimate aspects of a very personal and evolutionary Weltanschauung, taking distance from everything about the narrow ego and confined to the here and now. She does this through mise en scènes which are once strongly intimist and autobiographical in nature, aimed at a more essential spontaneity, not only in reference to our being in the world but also to our interrelational ampullae.”
Domenico de Chirico, Independent curator
EDUCATION
2019 - 2021, Master of Fine Art, Umeå Academy of Fine Arts, Sweden
2013 - 2019, Master of Science in Psychology, Umeå University, Sweden
SOLO AND DUO EXHIBITIONS
2023, Vanity, Plus One Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
2023, Between The Nightingale And The Lark, Ponti, Antwerp, Belgium
2022, Fredrik Roos Grant Exhibition, Artipelag, Stockholm, Sweden
2022, Fire Walk With Me, Örnsköldsvik Museum, Örnsköldsvik, Sweden
2020, A Moment in the Sun, Galleri Syster, Luleå, Sweden
2019, Transtemporal Self Portrait, Alta Art Space, Malmö, Sweden
2017, Watching Television, Galeria Centofiorini, Civitanova Marche, Italien
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024, More Than Now, Moosey Gallery, London, England
2023, Facetime, PLUS-ONE Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
2023, Enter Art fair, PLUS-ONE Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark
2023, Interstate of Mind, PLUS-ONE Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
2022, Know Thyself, Ponti, Antwerp, Belgium
2022, Once Upon A Time..., 23-25 Chiltern Street, London, England
2022, Another Spring, Diskus Gallery, Aalst, Belgium
2021, In an Exceptional Time, Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden
2020, Melancholympics, Wunderwall / PLUS-ONE Gallery & Sofie Van de Velde Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
2020, Nu, Museum Anna Norlander, Skellefteå, Sweden
2020, Hot Paper, GIFC, Online
2020, Showhouse Jay Jay, Showhouse Jay Jay, Online
2020, Soujourn, Galleri Alva, Umeå, Sweden
2019, Velvet Ropes, Galleri Golsa, Oslo, Norway
2018, Iceage Beyondless, Eighteen Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark
2018, The Thinking Hand, Royal Castle of Sweden, Stockholm, Sweden
2018, Opening Nights, Babycastles, New York, USA
2018, Opening Nights, Duo, Tokyo, Japan
2018, Opening Nights, Gold Diggers, Los Angeles, USA
2018, 16 Souls Nobody Noticed, Galleri Verkligheten, Umeå, Sweden
2017, GIFC, The Hole Gallery, New York, USA
2017, In Sketchland, Galleriet, Umeå, Sweden
2017, GIFC, Gallery Steinsland Berliner, Stockholm, Sweden
2017, GIFC, David Risley Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark
2017, GIFC, Galerie Agnes B Du Jour, Paris, France
PUBLICATIONS
2020, Bergsmotiv, Martin Eltermann
2018, Opening Nights, V1 Gallery
2017, Watching Television, Galeria Centofiorini
GRANTS AND AWARDS
2022, Fredrik Roos Grant, Stockholm, Sweden
2022, Work Scholarship Konstnärsnämnden, Stockholm, Sweden
2021, Örnsköldsvik Konsthall - KiK, Örnsköldsvik, Sweden
2021, Eva och Hugo Bergmans stipendium - Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm, Sweden
2019, Galleri Syster Samartbete, Luleå, Sweden
2018, The Thinking Hand, Nominated, Stockholm, Sweden
2017, Grant Of Culture And Travel, Umeå, Sweden
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Public Art Agency Sweden, Six Works
Skellefteå Municipality, Five Works
Umeå Municipality, One Work
Luleå Municipality, One Work
Soho House Collection, One Work