Exhibition "BERGWELTEN" by Ewa Jönsson Hörtnagl
Sëlva/Selva di Val Gardena, Dolomites Region Val Gardena
from
center
BERGWELTEN
Ewa Jönsson Hörtnagl
Mountain Landscapes
Ewa Jönsson Hörtnagl’s painting is rooted in a long art-historical tradition of mapping memory and lived experience in a world marked by transience. Bergwelten is a series of works based on the same principles that underpin the artist’s entire body of work. It is a sequence of landscapes that highlights excavation and the penetration of different layers in search of one or more central cores.
The mountain itself becomes a metaphor for the very same mass of stored memories, which gradually condense—layer upon layer—into a closed and seemingly uniform form. Yet we know that rock, like trees, contains countless rings of time and simultaneously embodies all epochs.
The artist works with deliberate restraint and a rigorous gaze. Her method of layering makes time tangible. The often rusty and earthy color palette further emphasizes this: it represents warmth and life, but also signals stasis or marks a turning point—a process of decomposition. In this way, the paintings become testimonies to the unstoppable passage of time. Memory and experience not only fade in their original form but transform, changing shape and character.
When we are granted the privilege of entering another person’s sphere of memory, even briefly, a natural desire arises to bring our own memories to life. Perhaps the viewer begins to examine the fragments that surface as traces upon the painted surface, interpreting them as meaningful signs. In this way, the paintings can be “read,” their marks forming a wordless language filled with information, emotion, and mystery—a silent poetry that claims time for itself, if one is willing to engage.
Johanna Gredfors Ottesen, art critic
Ewa Jönsson Hörtnagl,
born in 1950 in Helsingborg, Sweden. She studied painting, printmaking, and photography at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna and later painting under Prof. Oswald Oberhuber.
She lives and works in Sweden and Tyrol as a painter, printmaker, and designer, and realizes artistic projects in public spaces.
Her works have been presented in numerous international solo and group exhibitions, art fairs, galleries, and exhibition venues.
Ewa Jönsson Hörtnagl has also worked for theatre and film as a set and costume designer and is the editor of the photography books To Be a Man and Unforgettable – Unforgotten by Erich Hörtnagl.
