Håkan Rehnberg (born 1953) started from American Minimalism. His early paintings had a sculptural quality and were installed in series. In later works he has chosen to paint on sandblasted acrylic glass, which gives his colours a lustrously transparent quality. Firm strokes with a scraper across the surface, a technique possibly inspired by the German painter Gerhard Richter, give the painting a vivid, almost Romantic character in contrast to the Minimalist framework. Untitled (2011) is one of a series of paintings in which Rehnberg worked with markings in colour in a manner that has much in common with the informal work of the likes of Simon Hantaï. Scraped into the dark paint are white leaf-like shapes, twisting in different directions in a rhythmic dance across the surface, which is filled from edge to edge. This style of composition, as used by abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, is known as all-over. What is characteristic of Rehnberg, postmodern artist that he is, is that he does not limit himself to one way of working. Other paintings are composed asymmetrically, and he has also done Post-Minimalist sculptures in glass and aluminium.
Kristoffer Arvidsson from The Collection Gothenburg Museum of Art, Gothenburg 2014
