FOTOGRAFISKA

In Bloom

 

For many of us, a notion of desirable scenery worldwide has been made possible not only by travels to spellbinding locations, but also through our consumption of nature via technology. It is through the camera lenses and the digital screens that we experience nature, and confirm our existence.

Inka and Niclas’ work revolves around these sought-after landscape motifs. The manipulations in the photographs are all made in the moment of exposure. Together, they create a visual world that resembles and sometimes camouflages the world we are used to seeing, but which now has its own rules. In the works, the idealization of nature has gone into overdrive and the landscape has become fluorescent.

The series Family Portraits is a collection of self-portraits taken during the artists’, and their two children’s, travels to idyllic panoramic settings across the world. All dressed up in full body suits that bounce the light of the flash back into the camera lens, the shapes of what we read as a family constellation indicate anonymity. As we experience the four individuals’ absence in the photographs, their features erased, the role of Nature as an enduring source of idealization remains untouched.

Photographic sculptures recur throughout the artists’ practice: here, five hand-sculpted objects have been physically dipped into a dissolved, floating version of the technicolored palm tree hanging on the wall. This way, pieces of the photograph have transferred over onto the object’s surfaces, making 3-dimensional, fragmented versions of the very same photograph.

The center installation Sunset Photography is produced for this exhibition. A glowing nebula is hovering over collapsed sunsets. As if pulled by the forcefield of a black hole, the seascapes have risen from being tossed in a pile like wet towels. A complete understanding of the medium proves to be difficult. Only parts of the romantic sceneries are visible, and the viewer is invited to fill the void with their desires and ideas of the perfect shot.

Inka Lindergård (Finland/Sweden) and Niclas Lindergård (Sweden) have worked together since 2007, and live in Stockholm, Sweden.