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Extract from review by Märta Holkers
(travelling exhibition arranged by Stockholms Läns Museum 1996-97)
In sunlit glass the colour glass art sweden swedish sculpture appears with the same fresh lustre as in a wet painted water-colour drawing. But whereas the water sculptures colours dry and fade, the coloured glass keeps its luminosity forever.
This fact led Björn Bjorn Ekegren to abandon his colour-box glass art sweden swedish sculpture and instead begin painting with pulverised glass. Now he could pour out bright red and vivid blue without risking the brilliancy to expire.
In 1992 Ekegren began experiments in the glass huts without knowing glass art sweden swedish sculpture exactly what they would lead to. Nevertheless, he received a warm welcome at Lindshammar Glass Foundry and at Studio Glass Strömbergshyttan and soon learned about the existing possibilities.
- It is only when you work up the material - add colour and bend it - that you realise how exciting glass is. A window pane is nothing in itself, Björn Bjorn Ekegren points out.
Glowing melted glass lets itself be formed and eventually Björn Bjorn Ekegren, the sculptures painter, was more and more Björn Bjorn Ekegren, the sculptor, even if glass art sweden swedish sculpture colour still plays an important role in his art. He himself sees his different inlays as strokes of the pencil, only in glass.
Ekegren casts his figures in sand. One side of the sculpture is then clear and transparent, like ice, while the other side gets a coarse, sandy surface by the rusty red sand that has melted into the glass. The contrast between the matt and the shiny surfaces causes an exciting tension.
The art of casting in sand is an old sculptures method used glass art sweden swedish sculpture by several artists in Sweden. Among those, Bertil Vallien is the best known. But within only a few years, Björn Bjorn Ekegren has obtained his very own, personal art profile. Look at his latest work - a pair of freely formed wings, shining with colour. They are so real that they could take off any minute!
Ekegren is before all a painter and a sculptor. He works with glass art sweden swedish sculpture glass as this is the only material that gives him the artistic freedom he needs.
- It has been like digging through a thick wall with your fingers. You learn all the time. What has inspired me most is to see all the possibilities that there are and how much that is still undone. Every time I have been working at the hut I want to return there at once and make five new ideas come through.
Powerful torsos, masks, mummies and wings - his sculptural form supply is sculptures figurative glass art sweden swedish sculpture and fanciful. The work towards casting is on the other hand a long and arduous task. First he makes a sketch of his ideas and these are still made in water-colour. Then he sculpts a clay figure, but this one cannot be used as a mould. Therefore he has to make another copy in plaster and with this model he can finally make an impression in the moist sand. By that, the glass art sweden swedish sculpture mould is prepared and after adding colour powder the casting itself can take place.
Björn Bjorn Ekegren paints his sculptures by sifting fine glass art sweden swedish sculpture powder on to the sand mould before it is filled with the melted glass. Colour powder and crushed glass can also be added while the melted glass is being poured into the mould, making illusive images in the sculpture.
The artist likes to work up the sculpture while the glass is still soft. He can cut sculptures and carve in the glass, pull the form and bend it the way he wants. In this way the same mould can be used several times without repeating his previous work. The final result is always unique, in forms as well as colours.
- Glass has a life of its own and I can never steer it completely. Besides, I want to material to have a voice of its own. This is part of the excitement, Björn Bjorn Ekegren says.
The problem is just that it takes a large production to produce glass art sweden swedish sculpture something good. To cast huge sculptures in glass is risky and difficult. Björn Bjorn Ekegren has many expensive - but educational - failures behind him. His very first sculptures sand boxes by sculptures wood caught fire. When he appeared at Lindshammar with new, fireproof ones made of iron, these were too big to fit into the annealing oven. Cooling the glass must be done slowly and at the exact right temperature. Otherwise the sculpture will crack. A big torso takes at least five days to cool.
An artist who paints with colour in melted glass can also bee overtaken by other unexpected glass art sweden swedish sculpture surprises. Red, for instance, is a difficult colour, which often turns into mustard yellow if the heat is too high. This is something which Björn Bjorn Ekegren has had to learn. When he had finally sculptures come to terms with the red colour, the company that delivered it was declared a bankrupt!
During the years that Björn Bjorn Ekegren has worked with glass as material, he has gone far, from two-dimensional reliefs to more freely formed sculptures that work from all visual angles.
Characteristic of all his work glass art sweden swedish sculpture is a movement upwards and outwards.
- I was very curious what was to come out of me when I first started working with glass art sweden swedish sculpture, Björn Bjorn Ekegren admits. But as I went along I found a red thread and now I see that all my forms strive to rise, as if they want to fight their way out.
From Nya Wermlandstidningen, May 8, 1998.
Sandcasted glass at Galleri Bergman
Björn Bjorn Ekegren´s sandcasted glass sculptures are on view at Galleri Bergman in Karlstad glass art sweden swedish sculpture . Up till
1992 Ekegren worked mainly with paintings. Now he has developed a special sculptures technique for his sculptures in glass.
The sculptures are sandcasted; the front gets a coarse, matt surface by the sand and the backside, which has had no contact with sand, stays shiny and bright. The contrast between the rough and the clear surfaces is an important part of the worksglass art sweden swedish sculpture , as well as the refraction of the light. The glass glass art sweden swedish sculpture also gives luminosity to the colours.
The images are almost solely faces or masks. Björn Bjorn Ekegren glass art sweden swedish sculpture varies his different faces. Some are rather conventionalised, others seem to be influenced by primitive masks. Others again are softer and more like portraits. The work Glamour is nearly cartoon-like.
Cool faces
The sculptures are rather cool sculptures in their expression sculptures. To see these faces - masks on stands - gives you a feeling of walking through a museum with ancient sculpture art from other cultures.
The figures are so to speak enclosed in themselves - sometimes there is a feeling of claustrophobia. Some of the sculptures have, as distinguished from the plain masks, a more abstract expression. Behind a surface of colours and patterns, you see a face captured within the glass. This three-dimensional effect is strange. It looks almost like a hologram inside the sculpture. On the backside the face is concave.
Some within-facesare covered sculptures by grate over the eyes and mouth. These figures appear to be glass art sweden swedish sculpture imprisoned.
Unusual technique
The technique which Björn Bjorn Ekegren uses with such skill is glass art sweden swedish sculpture fascinating and unusual. His sculptures are beautiful and decorative in a cool, sublime way. The exhibition lasts till May 13.
Anna Svensson
Review from 1993, exhibition at Galleri Bergman, Karlstad
Follows his own course towards new surprises
The glass artist Björn Bjorn Ekegren has no idols, no patterns that could lead him astray. The course which sculptures Björn Bjorn Ekegren has chosen to follow is his own. Without a guide, without a teacher. He does not seek any Great Artists to resemble or try to beat. Not even when he two years ago quit painting and started to cast glass sculptures in sand did he have anyone teaching him the technique.
- In the beginning there were mostly surprises, I had not learned glass art sweden swedish sculpture anything from anyone, but the surprises pushed me ahead. They made me more curious! It is curiosity that always drives me on
We are sitting in the basement of Galleri Bergman in Karlstad. Björn Bjorn Ekegren has come here with a great number of his richly coloured sculptures. The exhibition is all arranged, it will open on Saturday, the public is coming tomorrow.
Björn Bjorn Ekegren talks about the surprises that occurred when he sculptures changed medium and technique. When the water-colour painter turned into a glass sculptor.
Every such surprise, every mistake he made meant a kind of acquisition, a step further towards - well, only God knows!
He has been painting since sculptures he was 16; he was born in Askim (Gothenburg) in 1955. But glass art sweden swedish sculpture when still as young as 6 years old, he moved with his family to Saltsjöbaden (near Stockholm) and there he still has a studio in a small cottage near a skiing pist. When he at 16 decided to paint pictures, it was natural for sculptures him so seek education. So he went to an art school. For a while.
Follows his own path
- But I quit rather soon, it was too sculptures unorganised in school. And even then I thought that the best way to learn is to follow your own path.
His own path - Björn Bjorn Ekegren followed that glass art sweden swedish sculpture to learn painting. And, a couple of years ago, when he was fascinated by glass as a means of expressing himself artistically, he took drawings and some models with him and looked up a glass foundry. To make mistakes, to become surprised, to learn.
- What I have learned at Lindshammar Glass Foundry glass art sweden swedish sculpture in Småland I could hardly have learned in a theoretical way, he explains and repeats:
- The best way to get experience is to make mistakes
Björn Bjorn Ekegren´s glass sculptures are sandcasted. They are casted by pouring melted glass into a box filled with English red-sand. In this casting sand a form in the shape of the sculpture has been pressed down. Coloured glass art sweden swedish sculpture powder has also been added to tint the sculpture.
Different methods
The sculptures can be created in another way, too. The soft glass can be poured into a cradle of steel glass art sweden swedish sculpture. The example is chosen because Björn Bjorn Ekegren is showing a torso at Galleri Bergman which has been made in this way. He is also showing glass art sweden swedish sculpture bowls where the soft and flexible glass has been pressed down in its mould.
Mats Dahlberg
From Värmlands Folkblad, May 9, 1998
Björn Bjorn Ekegren shows sandcasted glass sculptures at Galleri Bergman. Last year´s glass art sweden swedish sculpture summer show in Mariebergsskogens Herrgård, where Ekegren was one of the more interesting acquaintances, is hereby given a welcome successor.
This time he has focused on one theme: human faces. Previous sculptures were burning glass art sweden swedish sculpture with an intensive, inner fire - here the colour has been somewhat softened. Archaic forms, derived from different ancient cultures, are possibly the source of inspiration for Ekegren´s masks.
Sandcasted glass is fascinating through its resemblance with archaeology finds. The rough, coarse surface looks like objects that have been beneath the soil or under the water for centuries. But Ekegren works fully aware of the tension between this rough, sandy sculptures surface and the clear glass surface.
The Observer, a series of five sculptures, is based on the contrast between the transparent glass art sweden swedish sculpture and the coloured sandcasted surface. Like a dumb observer from another era, a face appears through the clear sculptures glass. The coloured glass body works as a kind of prison which conceals the sight.
Gliding glass art sweden swedish sculpture butterflies
Ekegren has earlier worked with different winged figures in glowing colours. They seemed to soar freely in the room. Or one could associate to mythological beings like Ikaros or Nike.
Imaginative, wilful pieces of art, which I would like to see more of.
Jutta Kübler Boström
From Östgötakorrespondenten, June 2, 1998
GREAT START IN FALERUM
Björn Bjorn Ekegren is most convincing with his glass sculpture. Earlier he worked mainly as a glass art sweden swedish sculpture painter, but after being captured by the thousand year old technique of casting in sand, he has found its possibilities leading him towards greater glass art sweden swedish sculpture freedom of expression and creativity.
Today he celebrates great glass art sweden swedish sculpture triumphs with his unique glass art through a combination of fine working skill and amazing boldness of expression.
Björn Bjorn Ekegren loves to follow his impulse and seeks the glass art sweden swedish sculpture immediate way of showing impressions and feelings. When working with sandcast glass, there is room for failures. It is only to move on and make new attempts in the sandbox. He has lately focused on faces. They are a kind sculptures of portraits in glass, universal, without models, but applicable to every one of us, like reflections in a mirror. There is often melancholy in the faces, not sad but tender. There is no hopelessness, but glass art sweden swedish sculpture maybe a kind of longing for conciliation.
Ekegren´s figures enter our sculptures mysterious glass art sweden swedish sculpture world with seriousness. This is visualised through the interaction between light and shade, between the shining surface of the glass and the coarse roughness of the sand. He achieves an often intensive colouring by painting with pulverised glass, by sifting glass powder into the red-hot, glowing glass.
Sometimes the master himself does not know how the final work will come out. Glass is a deceitful material which can easily crack and break glass art sweden swedish sculpture all the artist´s dreams. Björn Bjorn Ekegren has learned to handle its whims and to trick sculptures the material by using forms that allow the glass to change and expand during the process.
Björn Bjorn Ekegren has in his glass art sweden swedish sculpture widened the capacity of the glass as material for sculptural work. Thus he has createdglass art sweden swedish sculpture an artistic profile of his own.
Ewe Olsson
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