WG.Project 23, Dina Isæus-Berlin, The Spirit Manual

About

Besides being the second solo show at the gallery, this exhibition is part of Isæus-Berlin's master's examination from Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, where she will graduate with a MFA 2021. In the exhibition The Spirit Manual, Isæus-Berlin will show three new paintings.

Dina Isæus-Berlin is a Swedish abstract painter. Her work asks questions about different types of consciousness, both intellectual but foremost spiritual and intuitive, and how various outcomes can be reached through altered states of mind.

In her compositions, the large gesture of the brushstroke appears as a figure often superimposed onto detailed, patterned grounds. The stricter fields, made in a different pace and state than the fast gestures, is juxtaposed against the flowing movements to either challenge, highlight or support them. The combination of intuitive and planned layers is a vibrant rhythm visible in the final painting. She is exploring the act of painting itself, continuously learning and unlearning the movements of the brush. By emptying the predefined conceptions of rational thought, a more truthful expression of the spirit can be brought to life. Coming from the hand of an unoccupied mind, her paintings show the marks of a body in motion. It is a practice in close conversation with Isæus-Berlins metaphysical search for the principles of how to live.

Dina Isæus-Berlin, born 1991, lives and works in Stockholm. Currently she is taking her MFA from Konstfack University of Arts, Craft and Design in Stockholm, where she also received her BFA in 2017. Isæus-Berlin has been exhibited at Konstnärshuset, Nicolai Wallner Gallery, Copenhagen, Liljevalchs Konsthall’s Spring Salon, and at Gerichtshöfe, Berlin with Enter Art Foundation to name a few. She has been rewarded with grants from both Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts and Swedish Arts Grants Committee, among others