NEW LIGHTS

How is the image and experience of a place created? What distinguishes the personal, subjective experience from the prevailing one? The Arctic is the northernmost area of the earth. A place characterized by the darkness, ice and extreme weather conditions of the polar night. But also by the huge transformations throughout history: from mystic and inaccessible, to a thoroughly mapped out, politically, commercially and scientifically charged phenomenon.

For many, the Arctic is an almost fictitious place, partly due to its rapidly growing attraction as a tourist destination. But also due to its natural qualities: most of the Arctic consists of deep water covered with ice. Catrin Andersson investigates the images that have been created by and continue to be created by a place tha interest her, in this case the Arctic. She adapts information to construct new descriptions where the poetic dimensions of the place – darkness, ice, emotions – are set against the harshness of science.

The works in the exhibition emanate from the artist’s own experiences on the Arctic, parallel to scientific and historical documents. She visualizes her own experiences of the polar night in the work “Beyond the horizon (STATE)”, self-portraits where her head and face are blurred by a bright, white light: making her seem completely drawn away from the world, closed off completely within herself, in the solipsistic condition that sometimes occurs as a reaction to long-term darkness.

The work “OUT THERE (in this world)” consists of thirty photographs of ice, capturing the surface of the ice objectively and in detail. The installation evokes questions about the role of the surface and that of the ice. What will happen to a place when its core – here, the ice – is withdrawing? The four large diptychs are reminiscent of a kind of ephemeral maps, but lacking all the information one expects to finds on a map: distances, borders, names. Instead they display irregular networks of glowing lines, scratches and marks. In one half of each diptych the viewer is being mirrored in the surface that bears resemblance with still, black water. The other half consists of the inverted pattern, a colour photograph where the lines seem to gain new meanings. Some of the lines seem hesitant and as if the movement that created them stopped or turned around. Others relentlessly cut through both time and space. The diptychs show traces of human activity and transportation on the Arctic – historic and modern time polar expeditions, research, and commercial traffic.

The work speaks about movement, but also makes claims on different realities. They reveal narrative as abstract, at times reduced merely to signs. The artist seems to be questioning whether it is possible for anyone to have a personal or unique experience of a historic place that has been described in such detail as the Arctic. She is describing a new experience, not yet incorporated into the visual imagery of the place: and the viewer is free to project her own story, perhaps one that has never before been told, through works.

Karin Faxén, 2011
Translation Isabell Dahlberg

fotnote
The title “New Lights” was borrowed from a subtle but crucial change in the scientific handling of the wings of insects that have altered the prevalent view, and creating a whole new way of seeing reality – a researcher changed the white background to black, and unexpected, new insights were given to the patterns and colours of the wings.

NEW LIGHTS (In the Light of Lightlessness), 2011 (photo © Terje Östling)

NEW LIGHTS, DAYS END and OUT THERE (IN THIS WORLD), 2010 (photo © Terje Östling)

Installation view at ELASTIC Gallery, 2011

Installation view at ELASTIC Gallery, 2011

Karin Faxén

(fotnot )
Titeln "New Lights" är lånad från en subtil men avgörande förändring i vetenskaplig hantering av insektsvingar som förändrat ett vedertaget synsätt och skapat ett nytt betraktande av en verklighet - en forskare bytte den vita bakgrunden till en svart och oväntade, nya inblickar gavs i vingarnas mönster och färg.

NEW LIGHTS (If Price is no Object), 2011 (photo © Terje Östling)