Larsen / WArner is thrilled to present Echoes Within by Swedish artist Disa Rytt, the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition brings together Rytt’s recent work in painting and ceramics. Presenting porcelain objects alongside painting for the first time, reflecting several years of material inquiry into the perceptual and haptic dimensions of both mediums.
For over a century, clay and ceramic production have maintained a steady presence in Rytt’s family history. The ongoing material engagement has carried profound, tacit knowledge from one generation to the next. Growing up, the artist’s parents’ ceramic practice shaped the world around her. Immersed in the tactile and temporal rhythms of clay—as process, narrative and lived experience—her own relationship to the material gradually unfolded.
As Rytt’s artistic practise evolved, she distanced herself from this imposed material, instead turning to painting. Its materiality allowed for precision, a kind of minimalism that left no visible trace. The painted canvas was sanded to a matte dryness, withholding every trace of hand- a gesture refusing the fragility of touch. Yet, the seemingly inert surface was shaped by tension and intensity- layers built, erased and muted to stillness. Recalling the character of porcelain, it was resilient not in spite of its fragility, but because of it. Unconsciously, Rytt continued to gravitate her painting toward qualities that echoed clay. Even as she steered away from it, the estranged yet formative inheritance had fostered a way of thinking through material. Over time, Rytt became curious about the origins of her insistence on painting these white, matte and dry surfaces. The expression sprung less out of a conscious choice, and more from a felt resonance, unspoken yet persistent.
A 2023 grant from Konstnärsnämnden provided Rytt the space to explore the intersection of painting and clay. This investigation extended beyond the material itself with clay acting as mediator a renewed conversation began to unfold between the artist and her family. Rytt’s great-grandfather’s handwritten notes from the rise of Sweden’s first ceramic factory in the early 20th century served as material for a dialogue across time. The process of re-enacting his historic glaze recipes gave Rytt a deeper understanding of glaze chemistry and material properties—not only as science, but as a lived archive, where knowledge is passed through gesture and touch. By allowing personal history and material to converge, the artists practise found resonance within an inherited knowledge that had long been kept at a distance. This body of work marks a turning point.
Clay registers touch with unforgiving clarity, preserving each mark of the hand, not only on the surface but in its structure. Once fired, these impressions become permanent. In this sense, clay becomes more than medium; it is memory made material. Rytt’s recent work engages clay as a temporal and sensorial register, one that mediates questions of how gesture, time, and affect are preserved and reverberate within material form. Working with porcelain means negotiating fragility and resistance, navigating the tension between precision and unpredictability. This dynamic becomes a dialogue—in which the material is not passive but responsive. It holds the trace of contact, the intimacy of its making. The ceramic process has altered how Rytt approaches painting on canvas- not only in gesture but in material itself. Once held apart, the practices have begun to consciously fold into one another, bringing with them a material alignment of support and substance. Rytt has developed paints made from Kaolin (the same fine, white mineral that forms the basis of porcelain) and with red clay. As the boundary between materials softens, one medium begins to act through the other.
The paintings are made on sheer linen. Woven so lightly it nears transparency, the linen becomes less a barrier than a membrane. It receives both pigment and light, suspending the painted layer between surface and space. The brushstrokes are no longer sanded down to erase touch. Instead, traces remain visible- retaining marks of presence, pressure and movement. Here, light is not painted onto the surface, but revealed through the careful bleaching of the canvas. The surface becomes a threshold—the faint edge between what remains and what has receded. Light drift across surfaces, binds form and field, dissolving the edges between image and object. It is in a space between surface and depth, between what was and what is still forming that meaning emerges immanently. As a lingering resonance within, it is gradually perceived. Each of the works in the exhibition resonate in relation to another, enacting a slow oscillation of counter-forms. What one articulates, another withholds; what one reveals, the other denies. Between them, a chiasmic space unfolds they act as sites of encounter, where image, materiality, and spatial perception converge.
Disa Rytt lives and works in Stockholm. Selected exhibitions include Galleri LÅMA, Gothenburg, Polyfoni 5, Galleri Thomas Wallner; RÖR VID MIG NU, Olle Nymans ateljér; Women don’t paint very well, Hangmen Projects; Line of Flight, Galleri Thomas Wallner (solo); Bortom Glömskan, Galler Flach; Marvatten, Karlskrona konsthall; Lidköpings Konsthall; Disa Rytt, Galleri Anna Thulin (solo); In 2013 Rytt received the Olle Bærtling Stiftelse scholarship. her work is included in several public collections including Statens Konstråd, Region Skåne, Region Östergötland, Polisens konstförening, Apotekets konstförening, and in many private collections. Recent public commissions include Skimra, Tindra. Stråla!, Lillholmsskolan, Skärholmen (2022) and Sammanstrålningar, St Görans Hospital, Stockholm (2021)
