Ylva Ceder: [WG.111] Mildvinter

Characteristics of Ylva Ceder’s paintings are motifs or quiet rooms, with a feeling that someone just left. Human presence is a sensation, not of a body, but in the form of strokes of light or an open door. With an attentive eye, Ceder conducts extensive research before painting. She often starts from travel memories; most have gone to the Middle East. Prevented from traveling due to the ongoing pandemic, Ceder has looked inward before this exhibition and started from internal considerations. Where realism previously characterized Ceder’s work, something else has taken shape here. A new and own place has come alive in the paintings, where something magical might happen but melancholy still weighs heavily.

Even though the interior motifs have taken the greatest place in Ceder’s art, nature is always present. Through an open window, blue mountains and lush greenery can be seen. The light of nature outside contrasts with the indoor lighting of the rooms. In the paintings where the relationship is the opposite, where nature takes the greatest place, it still always exists in relation to human presence. In the exhibition, Mildvinter, Ceder’s interior have been populated by nature. The reality is no longer clear, one can find themselves in a fluid state between outside and inside. Like murals or shadows, trees, twigs, and grass stand out against the beautifully painted wall surfaces. Textile patterns consists of insects and animals. In the exhibition’s title work, a sparse spruce forest stands out against a plastered house façade.

In conjunction to the exhibition, a book will be published, presenting two series of work by Ceder: Mildvinter and Ängder. For this publication, Ceder has selected poems by the poet and Swedish Academy Member Jila Mossaed.

Ceder was born in 1976 in Lund, Sweden. She graduated from Konstfack in 2007 and has since exhibited internationally as well as around Sweden, including solo exhibition at Hälsinglands Museum, Passagen Linköpings Konsthall and Kristinehamns Konstmuseum to name a few. Her works are represented in private and public collections, including Malmö Art Museum and Katrineholm Konsthall. She lives and works in Stockholm.