Cajsa Holmstrand «

Cajsa Holmstrand has always used a common name for her works. She calls her pictures and sculptures "Relations". She has been dealing with relations between a different number of cubes which have created a series of events between themselves and the observer. But at the same time, since the 70's been interested in more obvious and measurable relations.

Her thoughts have been occupied with Pythagoras and his famous theorem about the relations between the two smaller sides and the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle, and the possibility of making the theorem valid for a three-dimensional image as well. To prove the contrary, i.e. that a similar mathematical relationship in three or more dimensions is absolutely impossible, has occupied mathematicians for centuries.

The problem has since 1637 been called Fermat's enigma, a mystery that has remained unsolved for more than 300 years. It is now agreed that such a solution is impossible, but as an artist, Cajsa Holmstrand is still as an artist stimulated by the events and complications that occur.

It began about twenty years ago with a simple model, a cube, where the basic thoughts of Pythagoras´s theorem were indicated on all sides, in the way the theorem had been depicted for thousands of years. Her idea was to approach the problem in a practical way, to unveil the form piece by piece. She wanted to remove each triangular part one by one to make visible what takes place inside "the cube of the hypotenuse" which in the mind of Cajsa Holmstrand replaces the square of the two-dimensional version. And so she did. She created thirteen granite cubes from which an increasing number of tetrahedrons were sawed away to gradually reveal the inside of the cube. These sculptures were shown at the Gallery Bleue in Stockholm in 1991.

Despite the rational method, some uncertainties about the inner hidden form remained. A clarification was needed and was eventually presented at an exhibition at the Gallery Aronowitsch in Stockholm in 1998. The exhibition was based on a number of objects made of acrylic glass where the now-visible events inside the cubes were described with strings running through the objects.

Selected Exhibitions

Selected Public Commissions

The Hospital of Huddinge 1981
The Hospital of Karolinska, Stockholm 1986
Post terminal Gothenburg 1986
Akademiska sjukhuset Uppsala (hospital) 1988
Post terminal Helsingborg 1989
The bar of the theatre, Stockholm´s Stadsteater 1990
Knutpunkten Helsingborg´s station 1991
The University of Luleå 1993
Stureby School Stockholm 2000

Artist of the Quarter - Enjoy Scandinavian Art

Cajsa Holmstrand - Artist of the Quarter -
The Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm, March - May 2005