Gallery Sonder is proud to present In the Hollow, the debut collaborative exhibition of Stockholm-based artists Herbst & Högman, on view from September 18 through November 9, 2025.

Working together as a unified artist entity, Chris Högman and Alice Herbst bring nearly a decade of creative dialogue into focus with this inaugural exhibition. Rooted in observation, empathy, and theatricality, their collaborative practice transforms ordinary encounters with strangers into staged, dreamlike worlds that blur the boundary between reality and artifice.

In the Hollow is drawn from the resonant sound one hears when knocking on the thin walls of a theater stage, a reminder of both the fragility and constructed nature of the world we inhabit. Within the paintings, figures are placed against deliberately fabricated backdrops, often referencing props, paper constructions, and stage-like scenery. This interplay between the real and the artificial asks viewers to reflect on performance as an inherent part of human existence.

Herbst & Högman’s practice begins by observing individuals encountered in daily life - anonymous strangers in hotels, streets, or cafes - whose presence lingers in memory. These impressions are then translated into imagined narratives and staged through handmade props, cardboard sets, and carefully directed light. Scenes are refined digitally, ensuring shared agreement before the first brushstroke is laid on canvas. Once painting begins, the duo engages in a dynamic exchange, alternating between Herbst’s tactile, methodical layering and Högman’s intuitive, rhythmic improvisation. In merging these two distinct approaches, a new, third “visual mind” emerges, an aesthetic entity distinct from either artist alone.

The works in In the Hollow possess a careful balance between specificity and ambiguity. Figures oscillate between presence and prop, sometimes rendered with sculptural physicality, other times dissolving into flat, cut-out silhouettes. In Whatever you say, a couple gazes at each other while their surroundings recede into paper-thin forms, evoking the sensation of being so absorbed in love that the world falls away. Elsewhere, earthy tones dominate the palette, recalling the dark wood, dust, and shadow of a theater stage. The paintings invite viewers to complete the narrative, to project their own experiences onto the stage, and to inhabit the liminal space between the seen and the imagined. “We don’t want to have a finished story in our paintings,” the artists explain. “It’s about leaving room for the viewer’s imagination, and trusting their feelings and interpretations.”

In the Hollow marks the inception of a singular artistic voice forged through collaboration - theatrical and intimate, grounded and illusory. With this debut, Herbst & Högman invite audiences to step into a constructed world that is less about resolution than resonance, where each hollowed surface amplifies the possibility of reflection, empathy, and shared imagination.