| | | | | | | | | Inka & Niclas: Sunset Photography XIV, 2023, mixed media, 31 x 29 x 4 cm, unique | | | | | | Extensions | | | | Sculpting with useless sunsets | | | | 4 November 2023 - 6 January 2024 | | | | Opening: Friday, 3 November, 6 - 9 pm | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Inka & Niclas: works from the series Extensions, 2023, hair, ultra-chrome ink, 2023, sizes variable | | | | | | Swedish artist duo Inka & Niclas manipulate the visual mechanics of nature photographs and playfully examine the everyday usage of landscape imagery. The artists probe the desire to consume nature through travels and photography and present oneself as being in harmony with nature. The exhibition Extensions consists of a combination of different bodies of work that revolve around this central theme.
The photographic sculptures Sunset Photography consist of landscapes and sunsets solidified in a state of wetness. Browsing through their photographic catalog Inka and Niclas picked out the panoramas they photographed on impulse, never to be looked at again. The digital waste that fills up our phones, is here used as a raw material. The glass-like, slimy creases of the sculptures hide and obscure. Only parts of the scenery are visible to us, yet it is easy to fill in the blanks, the image has been produced, shared, and seen so many times before.
In the mechanics of traveling and photography, a beautiful photo of a beach means that more photos will be taken of that same beach. This is true also in the case of the series Extensions, where the artists, before leaving home, identified the most popular spots at the tropical islands of Saô Tomé and Principe. In the works, the flashgun has left its usual position and turned 180 degrees, now aiming straight towards the photographer and us as viewers. The light striking the lens creates a sparkle as from a diamond. With the addition of extra bling to the hyper-romantic tropical beaches depicted, the artists points at the circulation of nature imagery as a commodity.
Extensions tap into the vibrant, glossy realm of fashion and style. The thin, dry, almost transparent prints on hair, move with the slightest breath. The title is descriptive, yet it plays with the notion of social positioning and building one’s identity by wearing your experiences and exposing the moments as a status marker through one’s body. Not only a hair extension in its most concrete sense but an identity extension that reveals who we want to be.
Family Portraits is a collection of self-portraits taken of the artists and their two children, in idyllic panoramic settings. All dressed up in full reflective 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. The camera that was supposed to capture them instead erased them. The role of nature as an enduring source of idealization remains untouched. | | | | | | | | | | Inka & Niclas: Family Portraits XXII, 2023, archival pigment print, 133 x 100 cm | | | | | | | Inka & Niclas Lindergård’s work has been shown extensively since the start of their collaboration 16 years ago. Among their recent exhibitions are Rethinking Landscape, Museo Fortuny, Venice (2023), Return to Nature, Pearl Art Museum, Shanghai (2023), In Bloom, Fotografiska, Stockholm (2023), Family Portraits, Museum Quartier, Vienna (2022), Destination: From the Seaside Resort to the Cosmos,– International Biennial of Contemporary Art of the South America, MAR Museum, Mar del Plata (2021), Suniverse, Xintiandi, Shanghai (2021), Rethinking Nature – Rethinking Landscape, MNHA – Musée National d’histoire et d’art Luxembourg, Luxembourg (2021), Unbound – Breaking the Boundaries & Multidisciplinary, Westergas, Amsterdam (2021) and Family Portraits, Les Nuits Secrètes, Aulnoye-Aymeries (2021). For Circulations(s), Le Centsquartre-Paris (2021) their work was shown throughout 11 metro stations of Paris. Works are included in private and public collections such as Moderna Museet, Gothenburg Museum of Art, Public Art Agency Sweden, SE, Fries Museum, NL, Edith Maryon Foundation, CH and Arendt Collection, LU. They were awarded the EMOP Arendt in 2021. | | | | | | | | | | Inka & Niclas: Extensions VI, 2022, archival pigment print, 68 x 90 cm | | | | | | unsubscribe here
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