Galleri LUNDBERG-SANDHAGEN presents The Outer Reality, a solo exhibition by Niklas Blomkvist.

What is reality, really? In The Outer Reality, Niklas Blomkvist challenges and redefines what we everyday call reality. The artist moves seamlessly between the deeply personal and historical fictions. It is in the negative spaces—between brushstrokes, lines, and contours—that the exhibition’s hidden centerpiece is made visible. A subtle language of its own emerges, weaving like a common thread through the exhibition's three themes.

The Outer Reality opens on September 5 and runs until September 19.

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The Outer Reality

Contours, shapes, and so-called reality are constant components of my art. I therefore find the title fitting for the exhibition as a whole, even though it contains different groups of paintings that diverge thematically.

The first three paintings I created for the exhibition share this same title. They are based on drawings I made outdoors around Stockholm last summer. The idea of enlarging and transferring these drawings into paintings led, during the working process, to the discovery that an invisible, secret language was hidden here: the shapes between the lines of the drawings. This discovery then led to a series of smaller paintings based on drawings of details from palace gardens, sketched at Svartsjö and Södertuna last year. The same method was applied to Pseudonym. Portraits are a recurring element in my work and vary in expression, from naturalistic to almost abstract. In this instance, I took it in yet another new, untested direction. The starting point is the peculiar story of the British poet Michael Field, who did not actually exist, but was a fabrication by the authors Edith Emma Cooper and Katherine Harris Bradley, active in England around the turn of the last century. In this painting, their idea of creating something else through a fictional character meets my idea of trying to portray this character and construct that portrait from the negative spaces around its lines.

Three paintings of faces. The Poet, The Actress, and The Gourmand. Live drawings of each respective person form the foundation of these paintings, executed using four different methods that yield four different results of the subject. The drawings are then precisely transferred and enlarged into paintings, where they converge into a single image. The intention is to convey a deeper and truer expression than conventional portraiture allows. The choice of color is associative, based on each of the individuals depicted.

Thoughts and feelings about the U.S. and its political climate lie behind the three paintings, all titled White House, Black Times. During a childhood shaped by fairy-tale and cartoon characters, toys, and TV shows, I formed an innocent, idealized image of the country—an image that has naturally changed over the years, not only because of politics but also due to my own inner journey, from a youth of erotic impulses, alternative music, and culture to the experiences of recent years. The idea was to let the more innocent role models from childhood collide on the same canvas with the influences of youth and adulthood, in order to portray the complex, drastic, and absurd nature of the country's governance and its consequences, like a surging, materialized subconscious within reality.

Niklas Blomkvist, August 2026