Tomas Colbengtson's art – images, objects, sculptures, installations – places us as viewers, as eyewitnesses, on a fragile ark, a vessel that has arrived at the crossroads of the present, where pasts and futures intertwine.
We are allowed, urged, compelled to witness how the art brings together – and thereby reshapes, transforms – times, places, landscapes, beings, faces, souls, worlds. Here, even the materials themselves bear witness, speak and tell stories.
The glass that preserves and makes inaccessible, protects and exposes, encloses and displays. The glass that gently encapsulates and presents images, like archaeological finds in secure storage, while at the same time, through reflection or transparency, incorporates the surroundings and the wider world.
The photograph, imprisoned, locked into its unyielding eternal present, stubbornly insisting on its monosyllabic, silent – yet bottomless – modus operandi: to show presence through absence, to preserve by ceasing, to reveal life by, through a rift in time, seeking those who have passed on. A kind of freezing fire operates within every photograph, every image, throughout all of Tomas Colbengtson's art.
Here, time is always layered, always provisional, unresolved. Just as places are negotiable, ambiguous, carriers of many stories. The landscapes, one stratum upon another, overlapping layers, relentlessly pierced by one another. The people, the faces, the souls – discreet and transient, yet struck, fragile, volatile, and yet unwavering despite their vulnerability, wounded and simultaneously resurrected; the art repairs, restores, reclaims but also reshapes, reveals and recreates.
- Jan-Erik Lundström, 2024
About The Queen Sonja Print Award
The Queen Sonja Print Award is the world’s leading award for graphic art, and a means to celebrate the art of printmaking, by honoring artists and supporting great talent. It is The Queen’s sincere wish that the award will support and inspire ambitious artists to establish themselves on the international art scene.
Three awards - the Queen Sonja Print Award, the QSPA Inspirational Award and the QSPA Lifetime Achievement Award - are presented every other year by the HM Queen Sonja Art Foundation, which was established in 2011 to generate interest in and promote the development of graphic art. The awards celebrate the excellence of artists at various stages in their career.
The Queen Sonja Print Award also contributes to making graphic art more available to the public. The opening of the QSPA exhibition space in 2021 was an important step towards raising general interest in graphic art. Our ambition is to create a meeting place where people can enjoy unique, premium quality prints.