17.1.2026 – 8.3.2026

Sinne opens the year with The Great Meeting by Ruben Risholm. The focus of the exhibition is a sculptural ensemble consisting of a group of life-size human figures and a series of reliefs. Risholm works in wood, and for this exhibition he has only used elm. In his art we can see an affinity with folk art, traditional crafts, and folklore, but his themes also include a vein that extends all the way back to Antiquity and Egypt.

Risholm’s wooden sculptures are imbued with a strong feel and respect for wood. By embracing the wood-handicraft tradition he also approaches sculpture from a folk perspective, in which the artisan’s experience and knowledge of the material serve as a basis for developing a personal mode of artistic expression. In so doing, Risholm brings out in his art something that feels familiar and yet deeply rooted in our own place and history. He creates a kind of mythology, a private visual language that plays with small gestures and symbols for us to decipher. These are not big fairy tales and narratives, but a window that opens onto something of his own, something personal.

At the beginning of an exhibition process, Risholm works freely. He lets ensembles and ideas grow organically. One sculpture leads on to another. The Great Meeting has taken shape around a group of human figures who form a collective. He has been interested in seeing what kinds of tension and contact arises between the disparate figures. The natural size, the 1:1 scale, has been important for giving them a presence in the room. Most of the sculptures here are each carved and chiselled out of a single log. This is an artistic choice in which the dimensions of the log and the way the tree has grown form the basis for the shapes of the sculptures.

Consequently, all the sculptures in the exhibition have a closed posture, and the connection between the figure itself and the tree becomes as clear as possible. Risholm is also interested in the frontality found in ancient Egyptian sculpture. In The Great Meeting he has accentuated this, with the face and, above all, the gaze in focus. His diverse characters all seem to have an inner calm, perhaps even a conviction. The agenda for the gathering is not articulated and is left vague. But their neutral, expressionless faces and their gazes – which either meet you, bypass you, or seem to go straight through you – awaken something individual, something mysteriously alive and real.

In his art, Risholm creates space for unconscious narratives to manifest. The Great Meeting further includes reliefs that serve to give us an insight into the world from which the sculptures here are visiting us. Our sense of the order in which things are created begins to falter. Is it the image or the sculpture that was the original? One of the reliefs also contains a text that takes its inspiration from the riddles and paradoxes of ancient Greece. It is as if Risholm has produced a script or a game in which all the parts seem to have a place and a logical function. He creates a tension in which the story is on the tip of the tongue, waiting to be told. Finally, he brings in the Hammer of Fate – a work that sets the seal on destiny, like the three hammer blows in Mahler’s 6th symphony.

-Markus Åström
Curator

Ruben Risholm (b. 1993, Karlstad) lives and works in Gothenburg, and also has a studio in Härnäset in Bohuslän, Sweden. He holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree from Malmö Art Academy (2022) and studied also at the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki, from 2017 to 2018. In autumn 2025, Risholm participated in the residency programme Ateljé Stundars in Solf, outside Vasa; the residency was a collaboration between the Pro Artibus Foundation, KulturÖsterbotten and Stundars open-air museum. Risholm has held solo exhibitions at, among others, The Ebeling Museum, Eskilstuna (2024); Kristinehamn Art Museum, Kristinehamn (2024); and Gallery Thomassen, Gothenburg (2023). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including at Liljevalchs Art Hall, Stockholm (2024); Stenkolsgalleriet, Gothenburg (2024); and Kuusisto Art Manor, Turku (2024). His works are included in several public collections, including Malmö Art Museum, Eskilstuna Art Museum, the Swedish National Public Art Council, the City of Stockholm and the City of Gothenburg. Risholm has also undertaken trustee assignments and worked as a guest lecturer. In 2025, he was awarded the major scholarship of the Edstrandska Foundation.