Bio
PaulaTove Maria Alderin (b. 1971) resides and works in Stockholm, Sweden. She has a Postmaster of Fine Art from The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm(2023) and a Master of Fine Art from the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen (2000). Working with painting, sculpture, installation, light works and text.
Themes and imagery central to Paula Tove Maria Alderin practice are Other realms, Other modalities of reality and Liminal spaces, seen through the narratives of Consciousness, Constructs of beliefs, and Metaphysics. In her artistry she explores transitions, shifts and resistance, through personally or historically charged materials, often informed by the materiality itself, both as a physical material or a container of ideas, and notions. Alderin draws attention from her own experiences of altered states of consciousness, and other realities than the apparent Intrigued by the idea of deconstructing experienced reality and disclosing, places and events, phantasms, incomprehensible to the human mind. But the non-ordinary places, that have no place in the Grand story, has no form, nor exist on no map.
“What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but anevent” (Harald Rosenberg. “The American Action Painters”, ARTnews, 1952)
Her work often takes a point of departure in performative actions, using her own body data or gestures. In an act that seeks itself from what is seen, to what is notseen, to what happens. Her horizontal working denies the gaze controlling the reality. Her actions are form in formation, free from intentionality, to become itself a thing, and not a representation of a thing. She uses her canvas as an arena on which to act. Subjects herself to the act of waiting, to begin to see what makes us not usually see such a vital figure. It may seem abstract, but each gesture draws a scenario. A place for being and becoming, a place to take risks. Portrays, the consequences of not seeing. Her work invites us to imagine. Regardless of what medium PaulaTove Maria Alderin employs, she brings together timeless, existential themes into tangible form.
Recent and ongoing works Delight in Peril, , solo installation, Uppsala Cathedral, supported by The Swedish Arts Grant scommittee (2021)Transcendental Transmissions, permanent light work in the city center of Stockholm, commissioned by Stockholm stad / Stockholm konst(2025)Forgetfulness Worth Rememberingvideowork/scenery, at the Royal Theatre in Stockholm (2017, 18) Boundless boundaries, / The Miraculous videowork/scenery, at the Royal Theatre in Stockholm (2017, 18)Scientificresearch through an artist’s lens’,artist program and xhibition, Coalescence; Sci Life lab, RoyalInstitute of Art in Stockholm (2023)
