Erik Swahn (Swedish, b. 1977) is an artist and architect whose generative work investigates colour, pigment blending, and overlapping forms in a pointillist style, using code to extend a practice that began in acrylic, ink, and charcoal.,He is based in Stockholm, where he also teaches at the KTH School of Architecture.
Farbteiler, 2021, Punktwelt, 2022, and Funktor, 2023, form an early body of work exploring colour, structure, and abstraction through systems of geometric organisation.In Punktwelt, each shape is generated by subjecting a single rectangular block to a series of Boolean subtractions and rendering the result in oblique or axonometric projection.,In Funktor, each piece is generated from a sequence of mathematical functions known as signed distance functions, producing a field of points that evolve to enclose space and form.His series Fields, which uses irregular grids to create light and reflections, sold over 105 ETH in primary volume when released on the platform Verse in 2023.,
In Autoscope, 2024, Swahn expanded these investigations into a fully chromatic universe of abstract, perspectiveless landscapes, where mountains took shape as cones and pyramids, oceans as sine waves, and forests as repeating cylindrical forms.He described the experience of the series as a “chromatopia”.His first release with SOLOS, Soma, pushed further into instability, dissolving form into clouds of chromatic particles suspended between abstraction and figuration. Swahn has said he was “imagining some kind of digital folk art — something very simple, not that technical, but evocative somehow”. His moving-image series Situations comprises twenty works that draw on the visual language of early home computers, text adventures, and demo scene graphics from the 1980s and 1990s. The works combine brief fragments of text with sparse pixelated forms and repetitive synthesized sound. Swahn, who has worked with sound and composition since childhood, uses the soundtracks to shape the pacing and atmosphere of each piece.
