This body of work strives to capture and represent tactility through the combination of light, materiality and detail. A tactility not only of the represented surfaces but also of what lies beneath; the imaginary bodies concealed and the idea of life they portray and symbolise. The torso as a container of life; a vessel of existence. The clothing as a veil obscuring that life. The textiles and patterns as manufactured frames directing an onlooking gaze.

The narrow crops turn the bodies into something flat yet, they are simultaneously dimensional. The flatness and the four corners of the paintings spark a tension against the alleged life and space of the subject. The paintings are meant to communicate an understanding of the idea that they are, in fact, paintings. A painting that, like a chameleon, tries to disguise itself as flesh and blood is, after all, still a painting. The bodies are fabricated. They’re paint tube babies.

Emma Åvall was born in 1990 in Gothenburg, Sweden. She earned her MFA from the HDK-Valand Academy of Fine Arts in Gothenburg in 2021. Some of her previous solo exhibitions include “Fragmented Architecture of a Portrait” in 2022 at Domeij Gallery in Stockholm, “Rapid Alterations in Slow Motion,” which was curated by Ebba de Faire, at Sotheby’s in Stockholm in 2022, “The Controlled Hallucinations of a Fragmented Gaze” in 2021 at POM Gallery in Mariefred, and “Negative Spaces” in 2020 at Galleri Thomassen in Gothenburg. Her artwork is represented in various collections such as Vellinge Kommun, Sundbyberg Kommun, Jönköping Kommun, Falkenbergs Kommun, Västra Götalandsregion, as well as in private collections in Sweden, Norway, and the USA.