Christer Glein

Fence Paintings

16 April - 09 May 2026

It stops here. Not really by choice. It's just where things seem to stop making sense in a clean way. A line, but not a clear one. Something that says "here" and "not here" at the same time.

I thought I was painting structure at first. Repetition, spacing, a kind of control. But the more I stayed with it, the less stable it felt. The fence started slipping—becoming less of an object and more of a condition. Something internal. A hesitation. A delay.

There's always a gap. Between the slats, between decisions, between what I think I'm seeing and what's actually there. That gap started to feel like the real subject. Not the fence itself, but the intervals it produces. The way it organizes doubt.

I don't experience it as blocking anything. It's more like it absorbs intention. You approach it with direction, and somehow that direction thins out, disperses. You're left with a kind of suspended awareness—alert, but without a clear target.

The paintings sit in that space. Not describing the fence, but circling it. Testing how little can hold something in place. How much can fall away before it collapses.

I'm not trying to get past it. I think the work happens in staying close to it—long enough for it to stop being a boundary and start acting like a surface where something else, less visible, begins to register.

Christer Glein