The Terrestrial

The Firestorm Foundation acquired The Terrestrial when it was first exhibited as part of CFHILL’s booth at Chart Art Fair, Copenhagen in 2025. At that years Chart, CFHILL dedicated its booth to two displays that shared the space. In conjunction with the fair CFHILL wrote:

CFHILL has chosen to present two established Swedish artists in this year’s edition of CHART: Christine Ödlund, whose work has increasingly shaped the field of contemporary painting through her visionary engagement with the unseen forces of nature, and Goldin+Senneby, Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby, one of Sweden’s most internationally recognised artist duos, known for their conceptually rigorous projects that bridge art, economy, and ecology. In combination, their contrasting practices reveal how art can intersect with science, nature, and systems of knowledge, bringing natural mysticism and scientific experimentation into focus.

In Copenhagen The Terrestrial was displayed together with seven other (The Magician, The Library, Element, At the Rim of the Innermost Core, Sun Harp, The Door and Black Ellipse) related works, hung closely together. The eight paintings, all works on paper measuring 150 x 100 cm, thus formed a group of images characterised by excellent craftsmanship and ambiguous imagery. Ödlund’s series of monumental works in watercolour, ink and pencil on paper came together to create a larger coherent work under the title Hallucinatory root systems sprouting monuments, plants and clear visions.

This extraordinary series of somewhat mysterious images, developed during a residency at the Theosophical Society in Adyar, India, marked a shift in Ödlund’s practice. Known for her engagement with plant communication, synaesthesia, and theosophy, the multitalented artist now turned inward, using clairvoyance as a subject as well as a method. These works can therefore be said to chart an intuitive field where biology, myth, and memory intertwine, reflecting Ödlund’s ongoing exploration of consciousness as a living network.

Soon after Chart Art Fair in Copenhagen, Ödlund returned to the Theosophical Society in Adyar, India, where she, together with Fredrik Söderberg (born 1972, Swedish painter), held an experimental workshop (Painting Sound - Hearing Colours. Artistic Strategies for Exploring the World) in November 2025.

The Theosophical Society in Adyar is located in an area belonging to Chennai, also known as Madras (its official name until 1996), the capital and largest city of Tamil Nadu (the southernmost state of India). The Theosophical Society was founded by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891, often known as Madame Blavatsky, Russian and American mystic/writer who gained an international following as the primary founder of Theosophy as a belief system) and others in 1875.

The designation ‘Adyar’ is sometimes added to the name to make it clear that this is the Theosophical Society headquartered there, after the American section and some other lodges separated from it in 1895. In 1882, its headquarters moved with Blavatsky and president Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907, American military officer, journalist, lawyer, Freemason and co-founder, and first president, of the Theosophical Society) from New York, U.S.A. to Adyar.

Theosophy draws heavily from older European philosophies such as Neoplatonism, as well as Indian religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. Although many adherents maintain that Theosophy is not a religion, it is variably categorised by religious scholars as both a new religious movement and a form of occultism from within Western esotericism.

Many important figures, in particular within the humanities and the arts, were involved in the Theosophical movement and influenced by its teachings. Prominent scientists who belonged to the Theosophical Society includes the inventor Thomas Edison (1847–1931, American inventor and businessman who developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, sound recording, and motion pictures), the biologist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913, British naturalist, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and explorer who independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection; his 1858 paper on the subject was published that year alongside extracts from Charles Darwin’s writings on the topic), and the chemist Sir William Crookes (1832-1919).

Theosophy also exerted an influence on the arts, and was especially formative for many early pioneers of abstract art. Hilma af Klint’s (1862–1944, Swedish artist and mystic whose paintings are considered to be among the first major abstract works in Western art history. A considerable body of her work predates the first purely abstract compositions by Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian) development of abstraction was directly tied to her work with the Theosophical Society, with the aim of presenting and preserving spiritual concepts visually.

The same was true for the Russian expressionist and pioneering abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944, Russian painter and art theorist active in Germany during the late Belle Époque and Interwar eras, generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction in Western art), who was interested in Theosophy and Theosophical ideas about colour.

The Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian (1872–1944, Dutch painter and art theoretician regarded as one of the pioneers of 20th-century abstract art, as he changed his artistic direction from figurative painting to an increasingly abstract style, until he reached a point where his artistic vocabulary was reduced to simple geometric elements) was also influenced by Theosophical symbolism.

The Terrestrial, from the series Hallucinatory root systems sprouting monuments, plants and clear visions

Provenance

Chart Art Fair, Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, CFHILL, Stockholm, Hallucinatory root systems sprouting monuments, plants and clear visions,29-31 August 2025.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired from the above).