Anna Camner: [WG.114] The Naked Dive

Camner’s oil paintings are characterized by an outstanding technique and precision. With a time-consuming and meticulous painterly process, Camner builds a distinct, sealed world with its own logic. A focal theme in her artistic work is the ongoing hybridization between man and synthetics. In her motifs, Camner focuses on all aspects of light, texture, and composition. With an illusory atmosphere, the paintings can be interpreted as windows for the viewer to observe objects of the subconscious.

In The Naked Dive, Camner has moved on from the organic and scientific aesthetics significant to her previous series. Several works are set in an industrial factory environment. Volumes of something that can be perceived as a blue viscous plastic mass rush towards the viewer and sometimes take on an almost human form. Camner also examines this toxic substance in several close studies, swirling and tempting, the rich mass allure. Other works are figurative; a porcelain hand, a close-up of a pair of fetish gloves and a doll's head - all examined in the same factual way and depicted against the pitch-black void characteristic of Camner’s art. By mixing suggestive motifs with human, sexual and mental references, Anna Camner builds a mysterious imagery; a melting pot filled with poisons and lust.

In connection with the exhibition, the book Anna Camner, Selected Works 2014-2022, is published, which includes an essay and introduction to Camner's oeuvre, written by the art journalist Nils Forsberg.

Anna Camner (b. 1977) lives and works in Stockholm. Since graduating from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2003, her work has been shown in several acclaimed solo exhibitions in New York, Stockholm and London. In 2017, she received the prestigious Beckers Award, which was followed by an exhibition at Färgfabriken, Stockholm.