The ship Demeter in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula is loaded with evil that travels from the East to destroy the civilised world. There are similarities with our time. The blood equals life for the ship’s dormant passengers who are insatiable.

The blood, which is the elixir of life, will soon pour out from the elevator doors in the painting Before the Blood. Stillness reigns for now, and we hold our breath like Danny Torrance. For a brief moment, we can contemplate the Navajo patterns on the walls. The patterns are props both in the film and in the paintings.

Horror films interest me – there seems to be a freedom in the genre, a sort of directness that hits the viewer at once. A shortcut to the subconsciousness. Is it possible to find such an element in painting?

The head is severed and rests in its own pool of blood, is this our future we see in the Palantir; one of the all-seeing stones from Middle-earth? I like to think about such things. Myths and stories that cross over to reality, or perhaps there is no difference. Our time will also become a tale for future civilisations.

The man hangs upside down in The Black Dog with one leg twisted. In the same image, the hermit unlocks the door to his house, or is it to the underworld? I think of the Hermit in the tarot cards, symbolising self-reflection and contemplation, but also loneliness and detachment from society. I believe this is the artist’s card, and art is, at its best, the Hermit’s lantern that lights up the world.

Hades, the dead king (Den döda kungen) of the Underworld, waits for us, and we follow the black dog – he is the one who guides us down through the nine gates. One needs a guide to the unknown.

In Winter’s Bone, death lurks everywhere, just like in the film with the same title – the painting was originally going to be called Golgotha, which means "the skull." I’m saving that title – it’s good. There is a painting by Edward Munch with the same name. So, I find myself in good company.

Chalice is the vessel that conveys the transformation of blood. Blood’s own alchemy – from one state to another. TRANSFORMATION – that is what art is about.

I have watched Roman Polanski’s film The Ninth Gate many times – it is a film with many flaws, but the story of the film is grand, and it hides many of the film’s shortcomings. I had planned to paint a scene from Rosemary’s Baby – it might be one of the best films in the world, I know it by heart. It’s perfect, there’s nothing to add – so there was no painting, but I have tried to approach it earlier in a painting of Mia Farrow.

Somebody Gotta Save My Soul. The book detective will soon have his head crushed during prayer by his employer. The one who does everything to partake in the devil’s power. He tries to piece together the illustrations and solve a riddle. Perhaps that is also what I am trying to do in my work. I map out culture, history, all of mankind’s flaws, the fall of man – everything that exists in between. I constantly return to the gaps and what grates.

Architecture, facades, brick. The building blocks of civilisation are the building blocks of the paintings. The colour is like a sculpture where the slate roofs are made of actual slate – the painting is hyperrealistic. The American 1930s, Art Deco belongs to the past now, in the same way that the god Pan does.

In the painting Wheel of Confusion, the wheel rolls with the impaled bodies. There are similarities with how the bloodthirsty passenger on Demeter treated his enemies. I borrowed the title from a song by Black Sabbath.

Lost in the wheels of confusion
Running thru valleys of tears
Eyes full of angry delusion
Hiding in everyday fears

The paintings are labyrinths and portals. One must enter them – deeper into the innermost circles to meet oneself. The Morning Star is our guide – I like what illuminates, gold and silver, pigments made of gemstones: Ruby, Onyx, Lapis, and Amethyst. The names themselves are beautiful. He is on his way into the labyrinth – the labyrinth is also an allegory for the brain’s twists and turns.

Fire Walk With Me. The old Native Americans know what awaits us. We take the canoe with the chief over silent and dark waters into the darkness where the owls are not what they seem. The stars light our way. The gold is transformation. The gold is eternal life, and we no longer need the blood.

Go, cover my soul, keep her safe, from the wind and the snow, don’t let her freeze. We ride on a flying carpet while carrying the blue shell. Europe a Prophecy. In many myths, the birds carry our souls home to God. All of this happens in the realms.

F.S. 2025

I stepped into an avalanche, it covered up my soul
- Leonard Cohen, 1971

It started while I was out walking. I was visiting my childhood home and strolled aimlessly around in what once were familiar surroundings - when it slowly occurred to me that nothing looked like I remembered it. A change of the landscape had taken place almost imperceptibly in the years gone by. To my great dismay, the images of inner landscape - sourced from my subconscious - which I often enjoyed in my dreams, did not any longer correspond with what I saw around me. It made me miserable.

It felt like my dreams had lost something, and it made me think of a text which the writer and philosopher Gaston Bachelard quotes in his book "Water and dreams" from a manual on the art of longevity of life by the Renaissance theologian Leonardus Lessius: "The choleric dreams about fires, war and murders; the melancholic about graves, ghosts, escapes and caves, all sad things; the phlegmatic about lakes, rivers, drowning and shipwrecks; the sanguine about the bird's flight, parties, concerts and things you dare not mention." I could easily associate myself with the dreams of both the choleric and the melancholic. This occurred to me when I arrived at an old pet cemetery I often visited. The place had always given me a kind of pleasant shudder. It is embedded in deep green moss and surrounded by very old and tall pines, and there is something dry and bleached about the nature here. Maybe it's all the buried animals that have drained the ground and made it dull.

One of the paintings in my exhibition depicts a street lamp designed by the Third Reich architect Albert Speer. I wondered if his sinister mind could have designed something that was good or if the lamp would always spread a somber shine and remain in the dark, among the sad things. Next to the cemetery, some of the forest had been cut down and some recently built residential buildings could be seen. It fills me with apprehension that this sign of modernity has penetrated my private dream. I moved on through the forest towards an old sanatorium that still was in use when I was a kid. It is large and castle-like, dressed beautifully in red-pink brick with framed ornaments, but now slightly in decay. It reminded me that I have often used red-pink bricks in my paintings - many of which also have a patina of decay.

There is one figurative painting in the exhibition, it is the first to meet the visitor. The remaining paintings are all abstract compositions without a specific message to convey, but I know it goes back to something I was interested in more than 20 years ago. This has now materialized in the paintings as a ghost from the past.

- Fredrik Söderberg, December 2018

In the exhibition Sol och stål – krigarens väg / Sun and Steel – The Warrior’s Path, a tension is created between Söderberg’s violent, meticulous watercolours based on Japanese woodcuts and the serenity of large-scale abstract oil paintings.

In life and art, Fredrik Söderberg has always taken a keen interest in questions of faith, ethics and the shortcomings of human beings, searching for a deeper understanding of the mechanisms behind human behaviour and its implications in a historical context. Art history, philosophy, spirituality and existential queries infuse Söderberg’s artistic process and serve as a backdrop for his work. His oeuvre encompasses skilfully executed watercolours, abstract paintings and richly illustrated publications.

The title of the exhibition is derived from the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima’s autobiographical essay Sun and Steel, published in 1968. Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. A nationalist at heart, he committed seppuku (ritual suicide) after a failed military coup d’état in 1970. The life and faith of Mishima has been a trigger point for Söderberg’s fascination for protagonists living in a grey zone of what may be morally acceptable. Taking responsibility for your actions and accepting the consequences is a theme in Sun and Steel. In his art, Söderberg challenges contemporary life, bringing traditional values and virtues to the table, shying away from actions which may be considered middle ground or based on consensus. Balancing complex issues in the grey area between good and evil, light and shadow, Fredrik Söderberg’s paintings are a result of intense concentration.

Abstract painting has been a recurring preoccupation for Söderberg, who early on focused on abstract watercolours. The large oil paintings in the exhibition are closely affiliated with the much smaller paintings in the series Alpha et Omega from 2016, for which a French Romanesque illuminated manuscript from the 11th century is a source of inspiration. The structure of a cross appears on a wide canvas, almost overwhelming in its different painterly structures. The large watercolour painting Sun and Steel gives at first hand an association to textile works from the Renaissance or Baroque era. Stepping closer, we gradually realize that the work consists of violent scenes of sword fighting, ghosts and unmentionable horrors.

Fredrik Söderberg's paintings contain images from a variety of sources that have been woven together in an ornate story of the pursuit of beauty and the essential. Whether it concerns a spiritual or philosophical search, or a meeting between them, Söderberg dives down to the sources connected by fantasies about truth. Among these truths lay myths, philosophies and above all aesthetic persuasions whose ambivalence put the fate of humanity in the balance.

From the spiritual hunger, which Max Weber came to describe as the world's disenchantment, arose a yearning for a national soul. A collective spirit grounded in something far from the harshness and complacency of the iron cage of rationalism. With sentimental eyes the Germanic roots were sought out, deeply buried in their own and in Norse mythology. At the time, these were interpreted as tales of yore with a new reality in a timeless, disrupted connection with culture and nature, reason and spirituality, the pure and distorted.

In Söderberg's book Styx (Galleri Riis, 2014) a despairing ambivalence is highlighted, in which bloodshed becomes a necessary evil, when blessing is reached through sacrificial rite. The journey towards death; through the river Hades, revelations, nirvana or the transience of life. The descriptions have been loaded with intensity and an eclectic abundance in a discordant memento mori. Here lays a discerned worldwide journey of the hidden, like a rope tied around the ominous words of myth.

With Germany's embellishment of the past, a longing for the countryside slowly came to life. Lebensreform and Ernst Haeckel coining the term ecology was a decisive step in the journey back to nature. The Romantic idea of a symbol-filled nature was turned into a comprehensible discourse. A universal religion, with discernible roots - more powerful than abstract worship. Nature would fill a degenerate world with meaning. The counter-cultural movements that embraced nature as a fully animated being also included vegetarianism, temperance, nudism and alternative medicine. The fragmentation of the pleasance resulted in immeasurable falls down the abyss, where liberating influences became pointers and role models became despots. Söderberg's travels in their remnants can be read as a repudiation, but also reminds us of an unfettered state of prosperity and decay. The good of evil, the evil of good.

Hugo Höppener's, aka Fidus (the faithful), life story illustrates this sudden turn. In 1912 he designed the poster for a conference on racial biology in Hamburg. His illustrations of beautiful athletic bodies enclosed in the universe, was allied with the symbol of the renewed Germanic people and the recurring sun, a symbol of the new kingdom. He who was once pantheism's foremost companion and in every way embodied the true way of living in harmony with nature's spirit, was now a mean for irreconcilable goals.

Since 2008, Söderberg has methodically worked in watercolour. In pursuit of perfection of clean lines, he experiments with a highly controlled application of form. In strict stylized representations he tames the fragility of colour, as in a choice between a park's restraint and a forest's spontaneity. In soft, ethereal coats the subjects are illuminated in an overall surface; ominous rays, euphoric glow and the sun's indispensable presence. Unadorned accounts of places, prominent figures and events are joined with abstract emblems, as if to emphasize the full penetration of the spirit. In an opposite approach, he seems to embrace the unwieldiness of watercolour. Contours flows freely out along the surface of the paper. With irrevocable stains and shadows seeping out. Occasionally chance is simulated; the artificial patina of coffee stains, the spiral evocation of automatic drawing. All this is enclosed in the Symbolist tradition, in which Söderberg undoubtedly operates. In Austin Osman Spare's sharp alignment, enveloped by organic structures, the sun as recurring point of contact with Fidus' illustrations and Sir John Soane's representation of artificial ruins.

The ruin, a beacon taken from the romantic visions for the future, a remnant of humanity's capacity, meeting nature's unwavering influence. The ravages of time and nature's fickleness veils a universal longing for death. Albert Speer's Theorie vom Ruinenwert took in account the expanding potential of the ruin. The afterworld was as important as the present. Iron pillars and other impermanent materials were to be replaced with ancient marble and stone, so it could erode like the magnificent ruins of the Roman Empire.

"Ultimately, all that remained to remind men of the great epochs of history was their monumental architecture, he would philosophize."

A recurring matter in Söderberg's works contain a sly contradiction; a reminder of the eternal influence of bygone kingdoms, and a projection-surface for interpretation. A place for peace of mind and a reminder of new beginnings.

Nature's inner conflict is humanity's inexorable struggle. William Blake's The Tyger describes how the innocent lamb and the tiger's ferocity was created by the same hand. The seasons regular shifts require a disorder to develop, as in the butterfly effect, where the wild remains unpredictable. It is humanity's inability to care and be submissive that is feared.

Söderberg's motifs inhabits this place, outside of harmony and rest. A land in which light requires darkness. Where the beautiful and coveted is reached through tunnels into the unknown, and at times dangerous. The poet Erik Blomberg's words echo:

Deep in our light ring of iris,
we have a pupil dark,
for darkness is what bright light
does trembling long to mark.

(Do not Fear the Darkness, 1920, Translation Linda Schenck.)

Ulrika Pilo

SW: One of the new works in this book and exhibition contains what I interpret as a Japanese ghost story, tell me about this and how it is intertwined with the more germanic characters in the same picture. FS: Brutality and control – there is an uncompromising edge in parts of the Japanese culture I find fascinating, a sort of perfection and attention to seemingly absurd things – in everything from Noise to Mishima, who committed seppuku. Tsukioka Yoshitoshi was one of the masters of the woodcut genre ukiyo-e. Many of his images from the 1860s depicted extraordinarily cruel and bloody scenes – one can imagine a feudal system that completely broke down and the woodcuts became hugely popular with the public – he also illustrated many ghost stories. Yes, the "germanic characters", I have borrowed the model from Fidus, or Hugo Höppner as he was called. He was a complex character loosely linked to the German Lebensreform movement, which was part of a zeitgeist engaged in nature, against industrialism, advocating naturism and nudity, sun worship and vegetarianism. He also made illustrations for several gay magazines. it all ended in disaster, he wound up like many of his peers in the political movement that was gaining ground in germany in the 1920s. in 1937 he was forbidden to work. He was actually one of the most famous artists in Germany in the early 1900s and since then completely forgotten. His ideas were rediscovered in sunny California in the 1960s, when nudity, vegetarianism, the worship of nature again came into vogue. it's fascinating how often the boundaries between freedom and tyranny are blurred – you can't always tell the difference. SW: I think it's interesting how your work on one level depict the idealized – they are well made and beautiful yet the grotesque and sometimes nasty and bloody is never far away. FS: There's a duality that causes excitement and lust – the dark side of good. The conflict between these poles is important because it creates dynamics, perhaps that sounds a bit technical, but I think the same can apply to emotions as well. SW: Your images often contain a form of provocation as you depict radical and almost forbidden characters and symbols not always known to the contemporary viewer, and you do so in very refined paintings. How much do you reflect on the viewer when you make the works? Do you sometimes try to tease or trick your contemporaries? FS: There's a dark undercurrent in life, which is felt in art, it has always been there since the first images made by humans. One of the most-read parts of The Bible is the Book of Revelation that appears to have a lasting influence on artists and writers throughout history. Perhaps as it is a dark apocalyptic tale, there seems to be something appealing to people in that – our shadow, to express myself in a Jungian way. This book contains a fragment of a portrait of the German writer Ernst Jünger, a controversial figure in many ways, he had a duality that is interesting. He became very old and lived an active life as a writer throughout the 1900s. One can see him as a symbol of that decade in my image, an allegory. It is possible that someone will be provoked by it, he was a Titan in many ways being built from flesh and metal. Many thinkers and writers within the realm of the arts have a clear idea of what is morality and good. Personally I do not believe that morale has evolved at the same pace as technology. The language – talking about morality, has changed during the 1900s. The viewer is obviously involved in the process of image making, but I try not to care about his or her possible expectations of my work. My paintings often consist of historical specimens and models, and it does seem that history annoys people. As an artist, I have the right to examine the grey area, the dark undercurrents, but it would be a simplification to say that my work is just dark, it is twofold, without darkness no light.

The exhibition Styx takes the tale of the ferryman Charon as its point of departure, myths about the rivers in the underworld and the battles that took place around those waters. In this exhibition Fredrik Söderberg's detailed and skilfully executed watercolours are at the same time chaotic, swarming and strict. All the grand stories seem to merge in these works where he depicts many of history's most iconic tales along with architectural historical paraphrases.

The new works deal with differences and oppositions, order, chaos, movement and contemplation. There doesn't seem to be any systematic or hierarchical order in the paintings, all destinies and historical legends are woven together. He describes them as a stage, a reflection on how the gods perceived humans in the myths, as game pieces, beings that could be used for their own purposes. In these works Söderberg wants to portray the archetypal conduct of a hero, and reproduces various sacrificial scenes. An image he has previously made use of, King Domalde from Carl Larsson painting Midvinterblot, reappears in one of the paintings. The king sacrifices himself for the country to achieve a better harvest - a classic mythological motif. The well-known image of Perseus holding the head of Medusa is also included in one of the works and William Blake's image of Los entering the tomb is depicted as a fragment, the image in which he carries the sun.

Söderberg portrays the idealized, his works are beautiful but the grotesque and sometimes violent and bloody is always present – in the shade of good. In it lays a duality that creates excitement and desire.

On the occasion of the exhibition, we will publish the richly illustrated book Styx, with a conversation between Fredrik Söderberg and Sara Walker.

This is Fredrik Söderberg's first exhibition in Galleri Riis Oslo, and also his most extensive presentation of recent paintings so far, following up on some of the themes in his exhibition in our Stockholm gallery last year. Söderberg's work is largely inspired and informed by the spiritual, the esoteric and the occult, with references to such Buddhist traditions as tantrism and other oriental teachings. The western occult movements appearing at the end of the 1800s and beginning of the 1900s, with several of their initially obscure yet eventually influential protagonists, have also been a major source of inspiration and field for subjective mapping in Söderberg's oeuvre.

The title of the forthcoming exhibition (I am He who Buries the Gods in Gold and Gems) is a quote from Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), central to many of the works, especially in a series of monumental diptychs depicting the controversial psychiatrist, philosopher and mysticist's houses in Küsnacht and Bollingen outside Zürich. Söderberg views the stylized architecture of these houses as vessels containing Jung´s ideas, his activities and knowledge lodged in them. In a striking large-scale portrait of Jung he is embedded in various religious cultures and mythologies growing wild.

Another contemporaneous reference is the founder of anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), visible in the exhibition through a series of works interpreting his representatives of humanity Lucifer, Ahriman and Christ. In many of the works a cosmic abstract expression is paired with an accurate figurative and archetypal style, incorporating pure and intricate mandala images inspired from Tibetan Buddhism and Native American nature religion and traditional crafts, all meticulously executed in watercolour, mineral colours and gold leaf.

For Söderberg the artistic work is a tool for meditation and concentration, connecting with inner life. Through the use of genuine colour pigments and precious metals combined with labour-intensive execution he approaches the alchemical and magical craft which imbues the finished artwork.

Galleri Riis is pleased to present our first exhibition with the Swedish artist Fredrik Söderberg (b. 1972). Söderberg is known for his complex and technically skilful paintings with precise and often symmetric compositions. The works treat vast and related subjects such as spiritualism, mysticism, esoterism and the occult. Created in moments of meditative flow, the painting-act becomes an exploration of the unknown and intangible. As in the works of Hilma af Klint, one of the pioneers of spiritual abstraction, art becomes a tool for connecting with something greater than the meagre life on earth; a dimension of spirituality, a gateway towards cosmos and a preparation for the unavoidable - death and possible afterlife. This exploration has become more relevant in a contemporary context severely marked by consumption and a fixation with the private and superficial self.

The exhibition borrows its title from the British author and occultist Kenneth Grant's (1924-2011) collection of short stories: At the Feet of the Guru, describing Grant's travels in India and his encounters with gurus and wise men. The exhibition will include nine new works, among them two large watercolour diptychs depicting the Swiss psychiatrist and author C.G. Jung's house in Küsnacht, as well as a monumental allegorical oil painting on canvas. The works, all made this last year during a residency in London, are the most complex and ambitious works Söderberg has done to date.

Fredrik Söderberg lives and works in Stockholm. He studied at Konstfack University College of Arts between 1995-2000 and The Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm in 2002. His latest solo presentation was in The National Historical Museum in Stockholm in 2011. In 2010 he participated in the group show Nordic delight at the Swedish institute in Paris, and the same year, he exhibited at Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall. On the occasion of the exhibition, Söderbergs first monograph Paintings 2008-2012 will be released by Edda publishing in collaboration with Galleri Riis.

Fay çe que vouldras.

However, we know that in our desire and others' expectations after some time will be a general reformation of both divine and human things. For, before sunrise, the sky illuminated by the dawn light.
Fama Fraternitatis, 1614

Above all, one must soberly accept Fredrik Söderberg's new paintings as the sacred atlas of his spiritual search for an answer to life's fundamental question: "What happens after death?" In Judaism, Christianity and Islam the divine resurrection of human beings by means of a spiritual awakening and transformation into a life after death, is a central doctrine. And while Söderberg shares this spiritual optimism with conventional religions, he finds his comfort within the realm of the esoteric and occult, especially from the teachings and prophecies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a complex fusion of teaching and ritual magickal practice that brought together Kabalistic cosmology, the Rosicrucian initiation system, ritual magick, Egyptology, astrology, tarot, and various other occult lineages. To stare into his paintings therefore, is to see the hand of a seeker, a spiritual artist at work, as much as it is to gaze into Luca Signorelli's Resurrection of the Flesh, 1499-1502. In Symbols and Tools, 2009 we see a complex array of iconography including the Rose Cross Lamen, but far from an inert visual inventory, the iconography has the spiritual power to sink Söderberg into his occult trance life as he paints them. In this painting, as well as others like Meditation 7, 2009, the symbols of the Golden Dawn literally instrumentalize his spiritual search. Of course the Golden Dawn has its own history around personalities like Aleister Crowley, the infamous occultist, drug addict, social provocateur, and sexual libertine who the British press demonized as "the wickedest man in the world," but this doesn't rub off on Söderberg. He makes solemn claims for his art spawning alternative experiences, especially where the mysteries of life are concerned. In this sense Söderberg's art discovers new spiritual vistas, while being earnest, proactive, pre-scientific, and post-critical. His art is allergic to irony. Seeing beyond his untethered life, the heart of Crowley's writing tells us True Will is our essential spiritual core as we move from a relatively unenlightened state to a state of pure selfhood. "Do what thou wilt" was Crowley's moral and spiritual compass, yet he never meant it to refer to the outer emotional self, but rather to the sacred core of personal divinity. His conception of God was as a force within oneself. Söderberg has found faith in these basic tenets, and his art thus becomes the face to his search for spiritually. Why not? Do you have a better alternative?

Ronald Jones, Stockholm 2010