BROOKLYN, UNITED STATES

ULRIKA STRÖMBÄCK

Box with Lid

$760.00
Exhibition Submission Statement

In relation to ‘What Holds’, I am interested in how the act of containment can both protect and restrict, hide and put on display. While boxes and lidded forms often give the ability to close, safeguard and hide, my work interrupts this expectation. The pierced, irregular grids let air and light through and expose their contents. Rather than concealing its interior, the structures hover between openness and enclosure, between hiding and revealing.

Dimensions: 5"H x 6.25"W x 6.25"D

Material: Ceramic with glaze

Artwork ships: beginning october 22nd

Box with Lid

Ulrika Strömbäck, 2025
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Artist Statement

Grounded in the grid, my work explores repetition, containment, and the tension between freedom and restraint. Cages and baskets appear as recurring forms, containers that can gather and protect or limit and confine. Binding, twining and winding, ritualic gestures rooted in traditional crafts and women's work, attach, mend and complicate the pieces and evoke both care and control. Repetition in the making process produces pierced geometric patterns marked by irregularities and human error, making imperfectionpart of the structure.

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About the Artist

Ulrika Strömbäck is a Swedish artist whose unconventional 30-year career spans craft, art, and fashion across Denmark, France, the UK, and the U.S. Her experimental ceramic practice blends casting, coiling, and clay printing with ideas of geo-location, structural collapse, and textile-inspired layering, probing the boundaries between function, material agency, and art.

Her early work in Paris fashion with designers such as Thibault Van Der Straete and Pia Myrvold, and later as a prop stylist in New York, deepened her fascination with structure, pattern, and texture - elements central to her ceramics. Exhibited internationally, her pivotal 2016 residency at Galerie Lefebvre et Fils in Paris culminated in the solo show In Side Out. Now based at Powerhouse Arts, Brooklyn, Strömbäck continues to challenge traditional ceramic forms, infusing clay with the structural and textural sensibility of fashion and textiles.

Artist cv

ULRIKA STRÖMBÄCK

Education
● 2005 MA Ceramics and Glass, Royal College of Art, London
● 2003 BA Ceramics, Central St Martins College of Art and Design, London

Solo Exhibitions
● 2016 In Side Out, Galerie Lefebvre et Fils, Paris
● 2014 Drawn, P339 GALLERY, New York

Group Exhibitions
● 2019 Factory Made, Storefront Gallery, New York
● 2019 All Woman, Maison 10, New York
● 2015 Le Musée imaginaire, Galerie Lefebvre et Fils, Paris
● 2014 Le Show des Amis, Show Room, New York
● 2013 Summer Ceylon, Show Room, New York
● 2012 Landscape Story, Gallery 1205, New York
● 2009 ((5)), Art 101, New York,
● 2009 Summer Sculpture Show, Art 101, New York
● 2007 Vendor Direct, Art 101, New York
● 2005 Swedish Style in Tokyo, The Annex, Tokyo
● 2005 Heals Discovers, Heals, London
● 2005 InnovationRCA, Gulbenkian Gallery, Royal College of Art, London
● 2005 Joint show, The Hockney Gallery, London
● 2004 Urban Space, Saatchi and Saatchi, London
● 2003 Cellar Door, 491 Gallery, London
● 2003 Setting Out, Contemporary Ceramics Gallery, London

Residencies
● 2015-16 The Residency Program, Lefebvre et Fils, Versailles

Curatorial projects
● 2013 To Paint With Fire, Gallery 1205, New York
● 2013 Crawling Through Clay, Gallery 1205, New York

Awards
● 2004 Sir Eduardo Paolozzi Travel award
● 2006 Short listed for Bloomberg New Contemporaries

Other works from the WHAT HOLDS Exhibition