Solo Exhibition

GOLD GLITTER STARS

15 February - 15 March 2025

Galleri Thomas Wallner

Grimsbygatan 24

Malmö, Sweden

Photo Jean-Baptiste Béranger

... "The connection between glitter and real gold is symbolic and aesthetic. The connection to stars is partly astrophysical. Gold is one of the heaviest naturally occurring elements and is created only at the most extreme energies, during supernova explosions or when two neutron stars collide. For gold to form, a star must die. Our nearest star, the Sun, gives us life through a flow of energy. The Sun, like all other stars, are at the same time lonely microscopic points of light in an empty universe, with the Earth as a fortunate little oasis in the great darkness.".

Erik Wahlin

Sun, Corner, Space, 2024, oil and glitter on linen, 157 x 209 cm

Exhibition text for Elisabeth Frieberg's exhibition Gold Glitter Stars at Galleri Thomas Wallner in Malmö, Sweden, 15 February –

15 March 2025. Translation of the original Swedish text.

“Gold Glitter Stars” is Elisabeth Frieberg’s first solo exhibition since “Blue Green Black Swirl” at Kewenig Galerie in Berlin in January 2023. Alongside group exhibitions and the monumental permanent work “Notes, Vihamanaafushi, Indian Ocean”, 2024, at the Stockholm School of Economics, it has been a time of physical pain and limited mobility for Frieberg, as she has undergone three back surgeries, the last one this December.

It has also been a time for reflection for the artist after an intense decade in which Elisabeth Frieberg has exhibited in Sweden, Germany, Austria, France, Spain and the USA.

When she now presents eleven new artworks at Galleri Thomas Wallner, there is much that is recognizable. Nature is still present in all the artworks, in colors, details and motifs. Every detail and material are carefully chosen based on expression, symbolic meaning and art historical significance. However, Frieberg has moved towards a freer way of expression, which makes her technical proficiency less conspicuous.

Frieberg’s use of gold is typical of this. In all eleven artworks she has used gold paint and glitter in at least one form. In “Star, Taos, Black, Yellow Mica”, 2024, for example, she uses American “fool’s gold” yellow mica together with plastic glitter.

Frieberg also uses real gold, but only on the inner edge of the frame of some of the artworks, where polished gold-leaf reflects the painting into the room. The gold-leaf transitions into hammered metal imitating the shade of Rembrandt’s oil paint “Light Gold, 802”.

Frieberg uses “Light Gold, 802” on some of the canvases, for example in “Green, Blue, Torso, Spine”, 2024. There, the Rembrandt gold paint is part of a spine, a striped pattern which originates from the ornamentations on older southern European frames and is also found in several of Frieberg’s earlier works.

For Frieberg, the frame is as much a part of the work as the canvas. Her gold frames are partly an association with the bourgeois style she grew up with. The gold frames are also rectangular halos. Gold is a symbol of the divine, the “light of God”, which the visual arts have used for well over a thousand years to visualize the sacred in religious images.

Gold Glitter Stars’ central point is the unseen sun in “Sun, Corner, Space”, 2024, where daylight in sky blue and gold shines in from the upper right corner of the canvas, as in a child’s drawing. The sides of the artwork are painted, as well as a frame, a subdued starry sparkle where we gaze into the dark space.

The connection between glitter and real gold is symbolic and aesthetic. The connection to stars is partly astrophysical. Gold is one of the heaviest naturally occurring elements and is created only at the most extreme energies, during supernova explosions or when two neutron stars collide. For gold to form, a star must die. Our nearest star, the Sun, gives us life through a flow of energy. The Sun, like all other stars, are at the same time lonely microscopic points of light in an empty universe, with the Earth as a fortunate little oasis in the great darkness.

Erik Wahlin