Exhibition · Carl Kostyál · Hong Kong
Carl Kostyál is pleased to present a duo exhibition by Camilla Engström (b. 1989, Örebro) and Julius Nordvinter (b. 2003, Gothenburg) at the gallery’s Hong Kong space in Landmark South. The exhibition marks Julius Nordvinter’s debut presentation in Asia and Camilla Engström’s return to the region, where she has established a strong presence in recent years. Engström has exhibited widely across Asia with Carl Kostyál, including Jing Art Fair, Beijing (2023), Art021 Shanghai (2024) and most recently the group exhibition ‘The Cloak of Dreams’ at SWCAC Museum, Shenzhen (2025). “Camilla Engström’s luminous landscapes and Julius Nordvinter’s psychologically charged portraits approach painting from different directions yet share a common lineage. Both draw on the imaginative terrain of Nordic folklore, where landscape, myth and the inner life often collapse into one another. Engström’s paintings depict environments that feel both recognisable and strangely displaced. Oversized flowers, tree stumps and geological forms occupy the foreground like actors entering a scene, illuminated by a warm horizon. Having lived between Sweden, Shanghai and Los Angeles, the Chinese–Swedish artist constructs landscapes informed by very different visual worlds: Scandinavian traditions of landscape painting, dense contemporary urban environments and the expansive light of the American West. The resulting terrains do not belong to a single geography. They function instead as landscapes of the mind. Across this new body of work Engström builds each composition upon a ground of Indian yellow, allowing light to permeate the entire surface of the canvas. Vegetation and topography seem to glow from within. Nature becomes both subject and atmosphere. Nordvinter’s paintings turn inward. His canvases are populated by figures caught somewhere between confrontation and introspection. Faces echo across the background, gestures remain unresolved, and the characters appear suspended within an ambiguous…