Alice Máselníková | And the Wild Birds Will Carry Us

We are pleased to present Alice Máselníková’s second solo exhibition at Berg Gallery, titled And the Wild Birds Will Carry Us. The exhibition brings together a selection of works created over the past two years, and features both paintings and drawings. 

Alice Máselníková holds a unique position on the Swedish art scene with her unmistakably personal expression. Using nature as a recurring point of departure, she unites romantic beauty with the bizarre and enigmatic in a visual language which is at once alluring and disturbing. "And the wild birds will carry us / not away but towards the beautiful unknown" is a line from one of Máselníková’s own poems, and poetry is at the heart of her artistic practice. Her painting draws on myth and storytelling from a time when imagination served as a tool to navigate the unknown. During the Middle Ages, this gave rise to the most fantastical beings that made people gasp in wonder and recoil in terror. 
In Máselníková’s work, tales and symbolism intertwine with her fascination with nature, and follow the medieval tradition of allowing the ordinary and the fantastical to coexist side by side. 

Her canvases are inhabited by strange creatures, fruits and plants—some familiar, others less so. Associations with Hieronymus Bosch’s depictions of paradise and hell may come to mind, but in Máselníková’s work there is an additional sense of calm and harmony. Working mainly with oil, pastel, and watercolor applied in thin layers, Máselníková creates an intricate interplay of light and form. Translucent shapes merge into one another, and the boundaries between human, animal and nature dissolve. Here, we find no clear division between the real and the imagined, or between beauty and unease.

And the wild birds will carry us 
not away
but towards
the beautiful unknown.

And the whisper
of those graceful satin wings
will assure you
it is not the night

to be feared. It is not
the strange beast in the dark,
it is
just you.