TEAGUE & HELLGREN

28TH NOVEMBER 2024 - 20TH FEBRUARY 2025 / BARCELONA

“Richeldis Fine Art, Barcelona is proud to present a solo exhibition by Struan Teague, introducing his most extensive body of recent work to date. The exhibition also features selected sculptures by Swedish emerging artist Fanny Hellgren forming a dialogue between the artists’ shared explorations of landscape, memory, and materiality.”

Struan Teague’s (b. 1991, Edinburgh) compositions open a space for subtle visual inquiry, balancing restraint with a sensitivity to material and form. Built from nuanced layers of oil, acrylic, graphite, ink, and conté pastels, his works reflect a measured interplay between intentional marks and the accidental textures of the canvas—creases, stains, and folds that become integral to each composition. This exhibition marks a continuation of Teague’s exploration of memory and landscape, drawing from personal archives of photographs and sketches, where fleeting details—the imprint of a tide’s retreat, and the shifting lines of wind-blown dunes—inform his abstract vocabulary. These quiet gatherings of marks evoke overlooked fragments of experience, creating contemplative spaces that linger between familiarity and abstraction.

This collection reflects Teague’s evolving connection with diverse environments, from the rugged shores of Scotland’s Isle of Eigg to the textured landscapes of Torino, Italy. His Scottish series draws from Eigg’s coastline, subtly evoking the island’s rocks, seaweed, and shifting sands in Laig Bay. Shades of mossy greens and greys recall the natural textures of Arisaig’s Larachmhor Garden, lending an organic rhythm to his work that speaks to the Scottish landscape’s raw and elemental beauty. His Italian works, meanwhile, introduce the use of Ercolano blue—a traditional pigment that connects his work to classical frescoes and the art historical narratives of the Renaissance. In these compositions, Teague juxtaposes the natural earth tones of the raw canvas with carefully applied layers of oil and acrylic, allowing for a contemporary reinterpretation of time-honoured materials. Teague further draws from the muted tones and structural canopies of market rain covers, alongside the fog-laden views of the Po and Dora rivers. These elements lend his Italian pieces a layered, regional resonance that deepens his abstract vocabulary.

Teague’s process is rooted in a balance of control and chance. He begins with loose, unstretched canvases laid directly on the studio floor, embracing the unpredictability of unplanned marks, stains, and gestures that accumulate over time. As the work develops, he refines certain elements while leaving others untouched, creating a layered visual dialogue between accident and intention. The resulting compositions capture fleeting impressions of landscape and memory, allowing each mark and layer to resonate with a sense of impermanence.

Featured alongside Teague’s paintings is a selection of new sculptures by emerging land artist Fanny Hellgren (b. 1992, Gothenburg, Sweden). Hellgren’s work explores themes of time, transformation, and the ephemerality of terrains, both natural and constructed. Her practice spans painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation, and she works with materials such as sand, stone, water, resin, concrete, and pigment. Guided by the properties of these materials, Hellgren’s process-driven approach merges natural science with mysticism, reflecting on nature’s cycles and humanity’s search for meaning.

In her latest series, Hellgren’s sculptures—crafted from sand, resin, and pigment—resemble isolated, desert-like islands that seem both grounded and detached. Their surfaces, almost iridescent in texture, evoke the rugged mystery of lunar landscapes, hinting at something unknown and unworldly. These works invite contemplation of the human desire for connection and meaning, exploring how our sense of purpose is intertwined with our relationship to the world. Acting as windows to tranquil, distant spaces, her sculptures evoke the vastness of the universe, offering both solace and introspective calm.

Together, Teague and Hellgren’s works create a dialogue that resonates with the rhythms of nature and the fleeting impressions of memory, inviting viewers into a contemplative space where accident and intention, presence and ephemerality, coexist.