It's been almost a year since her acclaimed exhibition at
Waldemarsudde, Nocturnal Logic. Over the years, Meta
Isæus-Berlin has continuously displayed a particular brand
of strength, more specifically that of always seeking to reinvent
herself and be on the way to somewhere or other, while
remaining anchored to a particular idiom, with a particular
tonality, throughout. This particular resonance can be traced all
the way from Chair Beside Bed (1996), through Vardagsrummet,
Ett vattenhem (2001) and Den arkadiska spegeln (2019), to her
new, site-specific installation Frukost, which was made for this
exhibition at CFHILL. Homes, pieces of furniture, running water,
and everyday situations in a state of oscillation, drenched in
water or in mid-air, turn into subconscious moods made material,
to allow them to be viewed from without, as though one could
step outside of one’s own dream and leave it to proceed while
reflecting on its effects.

Meta Isæus-Berlin is one of the most celebrated among a
golden generation of Swedish artists. Few artists have succeeded
at becoming so universally present in the major Swedish
institutions, all over the country, while also claiming such a natural
place in prestigious, international contexts. Regardless of whether
they are being shown at Borås Konstmuseum (2018), the Hong
Kong Art Fair (2012), or the Venice Biennale (1997), her works
manage to reach their viewers on both the intuitive and the
conceptual levels. They are simultaneously majestic, subtle,
and intimate.

Återsken at CFHILL is an obvious sequel of sorts to the exhibition
at Waldemarsudde. However, a lot can happen in a year, particularly
if you work with the kind of determination and sincerity that
Meta Isæus-Berlin embodies. The work mentioned above,
Frukost, constitutes a natural hub for the whole of the new
exhibition. A table, rural in style, set with a tasteful yet plain
Swedish morning meal levitates in a series of disconnected planes.
The whole sculpture leans sharply, teetering on the edge of sense,
threatening to fall over at any moment. “That’s what waking up
and having to live is like. I love living, but it’s difficult, right? You
awaken to the world.” That’s how she describes the piece in the
interview for this catalogue.

To anybody who has followed Meta Isæus-Berlin’s work,
the most obvious change will be found in her new series of
paintings. In the past, painterly aspects used to dominate;
colour guided her works and provided their form. Her new
canvases have been treated and processed using a new technique
of her own invention, which emphasises the subject–an animal
or human figure–to the point where it seems almost to be
constructed upon or rising from the surrounding canvas, the
fabric of which has been left unprimed and dyed. This approach
breaks down the boundary-defining quality of the surface of the
canvas. It’s as though she were sculpting the air. The subjects have
been pared down to single figures, encapsulated in a symbolically
charged space. Emotions and loneliness, things that many of us have
experienced particularly keenly over this last year. When everything
else has had to be cast aside, nothing remains but the self.
It is a privilege to get work with Meta Isæus-Berlin. In an
approach similar to that taken for her previous exhibition
at Waldemarsudde, we granted the artist absolute freedom.
Återsken will be her first major exhibition at CFHILL, and
we are excited to be presenting the results of a year of explosive
development of one of Sweden’s most interesting and dynamic
contemporary oeuvres.