Artist: Sigrid Sandström

Perrotin Tokyo presents Dusk by Swedish artist Sigrid Sandström, which marks the artist's first solo exhibition in Japan and second with the gallery.

For Swedish artist Sigrid Sandström, dusk is less an hour than a condition—a moment where light folds in on itself, withdrawing just enough to leave space for something more meaningful to emerge. It’s also the fitting title for her second solo exhibition with Perrotin, this time in Tokyo. The paintings in Dusk are veiled in a glaucous, furtive sheen, as if illuminated by a sun long past the curvature of sight. Blues and charcoal greys dissolve into hazy, wistful tones, pulling the viewer into a slower, more pensive timescape.

Shaped in part by her childhood in the Nordic wilderness, Sandström has long been fascinated by dusk, in its literal and metaphorical dimensions. Nestled in nature, her family’s cabin stood on roadless land without electricity or running water. It was a refuge, a place for family holidays and to practice an intentional life of lighting stoves, chopping firewood, drawing water from the well, following an imposed rhythm, a slowing of the passage of time. This analog existence, where candlelight and kerosene lamps flickered as the only light source and mundane movements demanded care, continues to inform much of Sandström’s sensibility.

At the same time, Sandström recalls how, even then, the modern world seeped into the landscape—light pollution from a distant village, a faint reminder of the relentless reach of industrial brightness. While working on her paintings for Dusk, Sandström reflects on this dichotomy—how brightness erases as much as it illuminates—and on the writings of Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, especially his 1933 essay In Praise of Shadows, which details the aesthetics of darkness, shadow, and nuance in Japanese art and architecture. For Tanizaki, low-lit interiors conjure a fullness; the low eaves, shoji screens, and wooden lattices, in diffusing direct sunlight, enrich the experience of space, revealing textures and subtleties otherwise lost in harsh light.

This interplay between illumination and shadow aligns with Sandström’s approach to painting, where she often turns her canvases around, using the back as a diffused screen. The results are layered works that speak to memory and presence— impressions of an image rather than its stark actuality. Amnesia (2024), one such “verso” painting, subtly resembles the textured skin of a raisin, a patina of the bath of vibrant liquid pigment that must be on canvas’ other side. These paintings, like the delicate wicks of a vegetable-wax candle twinkling through a Japanese paper lantern, are understated. Though, enchanting.

A more striking example in the exhibition is Borealis (2024), a double-sided painting installed in the gallery’s window. Seen from outside, its visible brushstrokes and rich hues—inflected with moments of warmth—create a vivid, textured surface. Yet, once inside the gallery, the painting is a phantom of its exterior face, leaving the viewer’s eye to strain and refocus. This deliberate obscurity is similar to the Shinto understanding of Yami (闇), meaning “darkness,” and emphasis on the mysterious or hidden aspects of nature. The title, Borealis, also evokes the Northern Lights—a phenomenon requiring darkness to be seen. For Sandström, the Swedish winter offers a natural theatre for such beauty, where color has the space to flood the blue-black expanse of sky and earth.

Similar to generations of Nordic painters before her, Sandström’s palette bears the mark of her environment. The subdued, earthy tones of Scarlet Flight (2024) echo the muted light of winter, while occasional bursts of scarlet and ochre recall fleeting moments of warmth. Still, the works in Dusk go beyond a mere meditation on seasonal shifts. “In gloomy times, a gloomier palette,” Sandström notes. Painted in the twilight of autumn and exhibited in the darker months of Tokyo’s winter, these pieces resonate with the broader sense of dusk—political, environmental, emotional.

Sandström’s distinctive technique—melding printmaking, paint stains, arcing brushstrokes, and occasional oil sticks—imbues her works with a sense of flux. Within the exhibition, her paintings converse with one another, swirling and settling like liquid in motion. This interplay is especially evident in Sandström’s increasingly monochromatic works like Dusk (2024) and Distance in Blue (2024), where the scarlet flares of earlier paintings give way to the cool, contemplative blues reminiscent of Russian painter Nicholas Roerich’s landscapes—visions that hover at the edges of light.

Yet Sandström’s dusk is not a mere descent into gloom. Like Tanizaki’s celebration of shadow, her work invites a re-examination of darkness—not as void, but as a generative space of depth and tenderness. Shadows, in Sandström’s hands, unify rather than obscure, granting a patient power to what lies just out of reach.

Text by Paige Haran