 (b. 1987) is a photographer and print-maker living in Gothenburg, Sweden. Through montages of photographs of people, places, things and abstract pictures, his work revolves as much around mirroring his passage through life, as it does around the open interpretation of the meaning of images. That is, through new associations between them. After receiving his MFA from HDK-Valand in Gothenburg, Gustafsson’s work has been exhibited in numerous venues such as Galleri Steinsland Berliner, Stockholm (2022), MELK Galleri, Oslo (2022), Lundgren Gallery, Palma (2022), Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg (2021) and at the Mariatorget subway station in Stockholm (2022). He has released three books; 

 (self-published, 2022) and most recently, A House of Clay (Loose Joints, 2024).

Erik Gustafsson

Erik Gustafsson (b. 1987) is a photographer and print-maker living in Gothenburg, Sweden. Through montages of photographs of people, places, things and abstract pictures, his work revolves as much around mirroring his passage through life, as it does around the open interpretation of the meaning of images. That is, through new associations between them. After receiving his MFA from HDK-Valand in Gothenburg, Gustafsson’s work has been exhibited in numerous venues such as Galleri Steinsland Berliner, Stockholm (2022), MELK Galleri, Oslo (2022), Lundgren Gallery, Palma (2022), Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg (2021). He has previously published two books; 

 (Heavy Books, 2020). Soon he will release his third book A House of Clay, published by Loose Joints (2024).

Gustafsson places his conceptual and contextual photographic process in dialogue with a simple premise, a truism of photography: to elevate the everyday, to find meaning and take seriously the smallest of occurrences in ordinary life, and to invoke a sense of gratitude and wonder toward consciousness, sensing and feeling. Sometimes excessively normal, elsewhere tender and intimate, later dense and complex, Gustafsson’s warm slices of life are digested in the darkroom, where the technical processes of photography fall in on themselves, becoming embedded in the image: collapsing the space between process and final product.

Balancing consciousness and coincidence, Gustafsson’s moments of magical realism speak of a permanence, a perpetual present, where the continually unfinished image can always be, at a later stage, altered, manipulated and reshaped. Gustafsson’s work is a structure that is built to collapse and resurrect again and again in new ways.

– Lewis Chaplin, Loose Joints. A House of Clay is published by Loose Joints, February 2024, with two essays by Elisa Medde and Louis Nitze.

We are proud to present Erik Gustafsson’s third solo exhibition at MELK titled A House of Clay, where the birdsong of everyday life interacts with cycles of darkroom creation and destruction.

A House of Clay

 (b. 1987) is a Swedish artist currently based in Gothenburg, Sweden. He holds an MFA from the Valand Academy and has presented his work through exhibitions in the Nordic region and internationally. Recent exhibitions include NSFW/Svilova in Gothenburg, Gallery Steinsland Berliner in Stockholm, as well as the Mariatorget subway station in Stockholm. He also presents his work through publications, where he examines the format as an alternative exhibition space.

Gustafsson begins with his personal archive of photographs, which he reworks into abstract pictures. His process often involves cycles and loops of photographing, developing, printing, re-photographing, and scanning. The resulting pictures can be seen as metaphors for memories, where traces of the process are layered on top of each other.
Or, simply as pictures demonstrating the potential for change that lies in the act of reproduction.

In this exhibition, Gustafsson is showing 11 new works. By turning accidents and intuitive actions into a playful way of working, he has created a series of pictures that all have replaced the reality of the original photograph with their new appearance.

Solarization, a darkroom technique that creates partly or wholly reversed tones, is the experimental process Gustafsson has explored when making these works. The technique was a staple of experimental photography in the first decades of the twentieth century. For the artist and theorist László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), polarization was an example of an “intensified” manner of seeing that he associated with the use of chemical manipulation more generally. Seeing is intensified also in Gustafsson’s solarized works, in which several of the prints hold barely legible figurative motifs. Hence making the works oscillate between what is represented and being present.

MELK is excited to end our spring season with Erik Gustafsson’s second solo show at the gallery titled 

Time Loop Rabbit Hole

b. 1987) is a photographer and printmaker based in Gothenburg, Sweden. He explores the medium’s material possibilities and limitations and also draws upon its related phenomenological questions of being. Since getting his BFA from Valand Academy, he was nominated for the C/O Berlin Talent Award: “New Documentary Strategies” and has participated in numerous exhibitions and international festivals such as Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg (2018), Fotografiska, Stockholm (2018), Athens Photo Festival, Benaki Museum (2018) Galleri Thomassen, Gothenburg (2019), Nordic Light Festival, Kristiansund (2019) and 3:e Våningen, Gothenburg (2019).

Gustafsson presents a new series of luminograms, original imprints created by rays of light, exposed directly on to light-sensitive paper in the darkroom. An alternative universe unfolds in which the raw impressions of the photographic process and performativity of light are depicted. The result is a photograph without reference to anything but itself and its coming into being. The luminogram process is as elementary as photography gets, and yet, these works might seem foreign in a photographic context. As such the works raise questions about the nature of the photograph and how it can materialize and operate in the world.

Alongside the luminograms are works created with the use of a camera. The photographs show portraits and places of more or less insignificant importance, fragments of the photographer’s life. Pressing the shutter release is just one step in the creation of the work. In the darkroom Gustafsson, turns the space into a camera, continuing to add layers of light during the printmaking process. The flat surface of the paper absorbs these layers and creates an uncertain depth within the image. Every act of added creation demands the destruction of the original photograph and becomes a way to embrace the dual identity of our human nature, both as creator and destroyer.

Through his painterly-like methods and experiments, Gustafsson explores where the limits of photography begin and end, and tries to expand, renew and rethink the modes of photographic understanding. Working with chance and accidents as tools, provides a creative frame insofar as it allows Gustafsson to purposely get lost within the printing process. He refers to Walter Benjamin’s quote «to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery».


MELK is proud to present the first solo show at MELK by Swedish artist Erik Gustafsson titled 

Color Field

Swedish artist Erik Gustafsson works with analog photography and returns to the photograph's intrinsic elements such as representation, reproduction and the possibilities of experiencing time and space on a flat surface.

His work process often involves cycles of photographing, printing, failing, dodging rules, repeating and scanning. As traces of the process are layered on top of each other, the resulting pictures can be seen as metaphors for memories, or simply as demonstrations of the potential for change that lies in the act of reproduction.

The analog darkroom plays a central part in Gustafsson’s work as it both functions as an extension of the camera and of the mind. Within that space it's important for him to find the balance between doing as much as he can and at the same time knowing when to let go of control.

Alongside Gustafsson’s spontaneous daily-life snapshots, are abstract pictures made without the use of a camera. His ongoing series of Luminograms are original imprints created by rays of light, exposed directly onto light-sensitive paper in the darkroom. The Luminogram process is about as fundamental as photography gets; as such the works raise questions about the nature of the photograph and how it can be made through various techniques and processes.