Paul Fägerskiöld: Ergosphere — Paul Fägerskiöld

Peter Blum Gallery is pleased to present Ergosphere , an exhibition of new works by Stockholm-based artist, Paul Fägerskiöld. This marks the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. On view from September 9, 2026, with an artist reception from 6 – 8 pm, it runs through October 31, 2026 at 176 Grand St, New York, NY.

The title of the exhibition, Ergosphere , refers to the region surrounding a rotating black hole where space-time itself is dragged to such an extent that physical stillness is impossible. Within this zone, every observer is set in inescapable motion—a physical phenomenon that Fägerskiöld mirrors in the gallery, utilizing its half-spiral architecture to transform a sequence of rooms into a gravitational orbit. While the artist’s previous series of Starry Night paintings dismantled time-space with a primary focus on time, these new works break down space-time with an emphasis on space. Together, they loosen the viewer’s cognitive and physical footholds, raising central inquiries that have preoccupied the artist: What would it be like to be an easel-painter at the edge of a black hole? How does one observe a four-dimensional world of time from a five-dimensional perspective of probability, only to translate it onto a two-dimensional surface?

The progression through the exhibition begins with a deliberate gateway—a small, blue painting depicting the nearest black hole seen from New York City. Functioning like a simple door opening into a vast, expansive space, this canvas provides the viewer’s sole earthly foothold before balance is suspended and the traditional horizon line vanishes, carrying with it gravity, orientation, and natural scale.

The Starry Night style paintings, presented on raw linen with empty borders, portray cosmic regions as viewed from our solar system rather than Earth, centering on an invisible gravity source at their core. These works are constructed through an intensive process of layering, beginning with four to five coats of acrylic followed by four to five layers of oil applied from lighter to darker tones. Throughout this process, Fägerskiöld rotates the canvas in all directions so that conflicting brushstrokes build a textured, living surface; the final layers are then painted in the work’s ultimate orientation to align the brushwork with the stars. Moving away from his past palettes, the artist utilizes brighter, unnaturalistic colors that appear as rough, playful shards surrounding unpainted stars. By excluding the horizon and leaving raw linen exposed at the top and bottom of the frame, the works acquire a distinct photographic quality, simultaneously flattening the canvas into an absolute surface while opening an infinite, ungrounded depth. These paintings’ titles, such as View in the Direction of the Black Hole M87 . Seen from Our Solar System. 1 Jan 100,000, act as temporal coordinates projecting deep into a future that mathematically aligns with the light-years separating us from these celestial bodies.

In contrast, Fägerskiöld’s other style of paintings are frameless, featuring multi-layered, tinted linen grounds and glossy, transparently drawn circular motifs where the lines of the backside show through to the front. To create these, the artist tints his priming medium with just one percent of transparent paint per layer, changing colors with each application to imbue the linen with an oil-like tonality while preserving the visible weave. By continuously redrawing the motif with each priming layer, he tightly weaves the drawing and ground together, compressing the physical distance between the image and the raw surface.

The motifs in this series revolve around the geometry of the circle, creating a formal bridge to the black hole paintings while continuing his historical exploration of scale and dimensional movement. He focuses on three primary forms: the circle, the sphere, and the tree. The sphere and the circle are depicted transparently through twelve intersecting lines—resembling a spherical clock or a beach ball—causing the shape to visually warp, bend, and hover between volume and flatness. The tree motif functions as a visual contemplation of time and transformation, referencing astronomical diagrams of planetary paths and leaf-growth patterns.