Visual Culture

Since the Wadström Tönnheim Gallery opened in 2018, it’s been filling Marbella with brilliant, thought-provoking artwork, in the form of paintings, sculptures, installations, photography, and video. Owned and operated by Mattias Tönnheim and Andreas Åkesson, from Sweden, it’s the gallery’s mission to examine the idea of the painterly, to promote the direction of the painting and its relevance to contemporary visual culture. 

The gallery is currently showcasing the work of two young and emerging artists from America, Krystofer Kimmel and Henry Swanson, who have created solo projects: La Poética de la Cancha, and Ankle Biter. Both born in 1993, studied at the same art university and with a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and both emotive and provocative in their own ways.

KRYSTOFER KIMMEL was raised in West Palm Beach, Florida, where sports - specifically football and track - were a huge part of his life, alongside art. His love of athletics was the inspiration for his current ‘Footballeurs’ series, presented in La Poética de la Cancha. Kimmel currently lives and works in Paris.

However, before this, he worked for paint manufacturer Guerra Paint and Pigment, was director and curator of At Large - an artist-run gallery in Brooklyn - and has most recently exhibited with East Projects (NY).

“My work examines movement and the abstraction of figures through distortions of form, colour, and time. As a subject, I have been exploring football for compositional richness, due to the passion for football which unites people, and for the symbolism it contains, which forms its own visual language.” - Krystofer Kimmel.

krystoferkimmel.studio  @kryskiml

HENRY SWANSON, from Dallas, Texas, uses his artwork to express the comedy of youthful strife. Using an

absurdist image base riddled with stand-ins and totems, Swanson takes aim at the spectrum of youth, including everything from questionable parenting to domestic settings where ‘cherries were popped’ and wild decisions were made. Playing himself both as the hacky overworked, religiously-adjacent parent of a child and the impulse-ridden demon living inside that child’s brain, Swanson’s work wryly portrays the future of millennial parenting in a black hole of vague boomer philosophy.

“My art balances the mixed emotional perfectionism in the dynamic between aged creative process and unfettered creativity, within the domestic space. The continuing and abstract desire to ‘improve upon’ what is immediate and the escape both old and young people seek to mediate. Additionally, my Ankle Biter show discusses the notion of parenting and the tailor-made consciousness that comes with creative instinct.” - Henry Swanson.

henryswansonart.com @henry__swanson

The exhibition is running until November 7, at the Wadström Tönnheim Gallery, in Nueva Andalucia, Marbella. To see the brilliant works of Swanson and Kimmel, appointments should be booked prior to visit, via the gallery.



Wadström Tönnheim Gallery, Polígono Nueva Campana 37B, Nueva Andalucía

+46 704-411914  | wadstromtonnheim.se