At the Swedish Institute, abstraction is not viewed as an inheritance, but as a still active field. By placing the work of Olle Bærtling in dialogue with that of seven contemporary artists, the exhibition "Open Forms" revives a modernist utopia and confronts it with the present.

In Olle Bærtling's work, there is something irreducibly drawn towards the beyond. His forms never close in, his lines reject the reassuring equilibrium of enclosure. As early as the 1950s, the Swedish artist theorized what he called "open form": a geometry freed from background, figures projected beyond the frame, an abstraction conceived as movement rather than composition. For Bærtling, painting is not about organizing space, but about unfolding it.

Presented at the Swedish Institute, the exhibition encompasses nearly thirty years of this radical research, juxtaposing it with contemporary practices that, each in their own way, extend, shift, or fracture the modernist legacy. The undertaking is subtle: to create a dialogue between an iconic figure of European abstraction and artists whose works today question geometry through sensory, architectural, textile, or political experiences.

In Bærtling's work, color is never merely decorative, but rather a perceptual agent that activates the retina and energizes thought. Unfinished triangles, sharp diagonals, and vibrant flat planes compose a painting that never settles. This instability affirms an open, off-center abstraction, perpetually tending toward the beyond, capable of conveying a mental as well as a cosmic movement. A utopia, undoubtedly, but a structuring utopia, from a creator who dreamed of an art legible to all, like a universal language.

It is precisely this promise that the exhibition puts to the test. The works of Cécile Bart, Rana Begum, Ulla von Brandenburg, Jacob Dahlgren, Bernd Ribbeck, Bella Rune, and Brooklin A. Soumahoro do not explicitly reference Bærtling, but rather follow in his footsteps, each maintaining a critical distance. Transparencies, plays of light, modular structures, repetitive gestures, and textile constructions: these are all ways of opening form to other temporalities, other bodies, other uses.

What is at stake here goes beyond stylistic considerations. Underlying this is a broader question: what remains today of the modernist ideal of a shared abstract language? Can we still believe in a form that speaks to everyone, without hierarchy or imposed narrative? The exhibition doesn't offer a definitive answer. It prefers to shift the focus, demonstrating that abstraction, far from being a closed vocabulary, remains a field of experimentation, permeated by contemporary aesthetic, social, and political issues.

In the scenography, the artworks are not aligned: they breathe, respond to one another, and sometimes contradict each other. This circulation creates less a path than a field of forces. The "open form" appears here not as a historical concept, but as a method, one that consists of refusing fixation, of maintaining the artwork in a state of active tension. 

At the Swedish Institute, this dialogue between past and present takes on a particular resonance. It reminds us that the history of abstraction is neither linear nor closed, but rather made up of repetitions, shifts, and reinventions. And that certain utopias, even when weakened, continue to generate movement.

"Open forms"
Swedish Institute

11, rue Payenne, Paris 3^e
From February 20 to July 19, 2026

paris.si.se

@Swedish Institute

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