Ulla Wiggen - Passage
March 15 - August 31, 2025
Västerås Konstmuseum
Ulla Wiggen's detailed paintings turn the gaze towards the intricate outer and inner worlds of electronics and humans. This spring, Västerås Konstmuseum proudly presents Ulla Wiggen's first major solo exhibition in Sweden.
The exhibition presents paintings by Swedish artist Ulla Wiggen (b. 1942) that span a 60-year career.
Ulla Wiggen approaches her subjects with factual realism and often uses a subdued color scale. Her paintings are precise and intentionally distanced depictions of her objects. The subjects and the richness of detail in them mean that they nevertheless arouse thoughts about human existence, body and soul.
Characteristic of Wiggen's artistry are the clear and at the same time surprising transitions from one theme to another. In her work, one can also see a kind of passage, where the gaze focuses on something inside the depicted object and then moves outwards again.
In the 1960s, at the beginning of her career, Wiggen became particularly interested in electronics. Gradually, she moved on to painting portraits of people and then detailed depictions of internal organs. In the 2010s, Wiggen had her international breakthrough and with her Iris paintings she reached a wider audience. These technically demanding works were shown together with a selection of technical paintings at the Venice Biennale in 2022. In 2023, she received the Prince Eugen Medal, one of Sweden's most prestigious art prizes, in recognition of her life's work.
The exhibition is produced in collaboration with the Fridericianum in Kassel and EMMA - Espoo Museum of Modern Art in Espoo. In the spring of 2024, Ulla Wiggen's exhibition Outside / Inside was shown at Fridericianum and in the autumn, Passage was shown at EMMA.
