Becoming Wilderness
Inka and Niclas
Text by Therese Kellner
Becoming Wilderness is Inka Lindergård (b.1985, Finland) and Niclas Holmström’s (b.1984, Sweden) first solo show in Denmark.
The artists live and work in Stockholm but together they travel, seeking places to continue their practice of creating a different representation of nature, using the photographic image to capture their landscapes.
Integral to their practice is the wish to consider what it is in a sunset over an ocean or the view of a mountain range that is so emotionally spellbinding and continues to fill us with awe? What is it that drives us to go out there and collect these images over and over again? And what mystical aura’s create the sense of awe and wonder that colours our understanding of nature?
These are some of the defining questions behind Becoming Wilderness. Inka and Niclas’ practice evolves around an exploration of the different components that constitutes the powerful psychological effects of different natural phenomena and landscapes. In their previous project Saga, which was presented in the book Watching Humans Watching, Inka and Niclas started to deconstruct the attractiveness of a sunset. They experimented by extracting its different colours and applying them to new objects and scenes, they explore the possibility of transferring the magical qualities of a sunset to a lesser, more mundane image. This is further developed in the series The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the earth presented in the exhibition. The series consists of nine images of rocks in the shoreline dripping with lush colours and with the open horizon as their backdrop. For a moment the sunset left the sky and moved into these rocks. It is not an experience recorded with the eye but the migration of the colors has, through the testimony of the camera, been registered into a new corner of our reality.
Every different rock is photographed in a new sunset. Obviously, the endeavor is not to recreate an actual sunset, instead the work lies in the time consuming and persistent process of repeatedly approaching and deconstructing its magical effects.
Colour, flash and nature seem to have travelled through Inka and Niclas’s shutter and in the process a juxtaposition appears as the wild becomes wilder and the unnatural becomes natural. We see a glowing red penguin preparing to conquer the world and a tree stump naturally walking out of the water.
Whether living in a small house on Mt Kilimanjaro for three months, or chasing the midnight sun in Norway, Inka and Niclas use their varying surroundings to illustrate the natural world as a capricious and mythical place of observation.
Becoming Wilderness is a body of work that also includes more formal and systematic characters and sees carefully elaborated mark making that almost introduces us to the remains of some secret ritual. It is not only a positive exploration of the human perception but also a homage to the photographic medium. With this in mind Inka and Niclas introduce a spiritual element to their photography, using intuition, chance and an insistently repetitive work process in which they saturate the unexpected and the irrational. Their visual structures and collections of objects highlight a creative responsiveness and attentiveness to their environment.
The show title is borrowed from: "Becoming Wilderness - A topological study of Tarangire National Park, Tanzania 1890-2004". By Camilla Årlin. Doctoral Thesis in Human Geography at Stockholm's University, Sweden 2011.
Awards:
2013 Nominated to the German Photo book Price, Watching Humans Watching, Kehrer Verlag.
2012 Winner of The Swedish Photo book Price, Watching Humans Watching, Kehrer Verlag.
Selected Exhibitions:
Context Art Fair, Miami, USA (2012), SP-ARTE, São Paulo, Brazil (2012), Diplomat, Philadelphia, USA (2012), Gallery Swedish Photography, Berlin, Germany (2011)
In print:
IMA (Japan), Harpers Magazine (USA), Le Monde (Germany/France), Blink (Korea), Ein Magazin uber Orte (Germany), The Collectors Guide to Emerging Art Photography (USA), Capricious Magazine (USA).
www.inkaandniclas.com
Inka and Niclas
Text by Therese Kellner
Becoming Wilderness is Inka Lindergård (b.1985, Finland) and Niclas Holmström’s (b.1984, Sweden) first solo show in Denmark.
The artists live and work in Stockholm but together they travel, seeking places to continue their practice of creating a different representation of nature, using the photographic image to capture their landscapes.
Integral to their practice is the wish to consider what it is in a sunset over an ocean or the view of a mountain range that is so emotionally spellbinding and continues to fill us with awe? What is it that drives us to go out there and collect these images over and over again? And what mystical aura’s create the sense of awe and wonder that colours our understanding of nature?
These are some of the defining questions behind Becoming Wilderness. Inka and Niclas’ practice evolves around an exploration of the different components that constitutes the powerful psychological effects of different natural phenomena and landscapes. In their previous project Saga, which was presented in the book Watching Humans Watching, Inka and Niclas started to deconstruct the attractiveness of a sunset. They experimented by extracting its different colours and applying them to new objects and scenes, they explore the possibility of transferring the magical qualities of a sunset to a lesser, more mundane image. This is further developed in the series The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the earth presented in the exhibition. The series consists of nine images of rocks in the shoreline dripping with lush colours and with the open horizon as their backdrop. For a moment the sunset left the sky and moved into these rocks. It is not an experience recorded with the eye but the migration of the colors has, through the testimony of the camera, been registered into a new corner of our reality.
Every different rock is photographed in a new sunset. Obviously, the endeavor is not to recreate an actual sunset, instead the work lies in the time consuming and persistent process of repeatedly approaching and deconstructing its magical effects.
Colour, flash and nature seem to have travelled through Inka and Niclas’s shutter and in the process a juxtaposition appears as the wild becomes wilder and the unnatural becomes natural. We see a glowing red penguin preparing to conquer the world and a tree stump naturally walking out of the water.
Whether living in a small house on Mt Kilimanjaro for three months, or chasing the midnight sun in Norway, Inka and Niclas use their varying surroundings to illustrate the natural world as a capricious and mythical place of observation.
Becoming Wilderness is a body of work that also includes more formal and systematic characters and sees carefully elaborated mark making that almost introduces us to the remains of some secret ritual. It is not only a positive exploration of the human perception but also a homage to the photographic medium. With this in mind Inka and Niclas introduce a spiritual element to their photography, using intuition, chance and an insistently repetitive work process in which they saturate the unexpected and the irrational. Their visual structures and collections of objects highlight a creative responsiveness and attentiveness to their environment.
The show title is borrowed from: "Becoming Wilderness - A topological study of Tarangire National Park, Tanzania 1890-2004". By Camilla Årlin. Doctoral Thesis in Human Geography at Stockholm's University, Sweden 2011.
Awards:
2013 Nominated to the German Photo book Price, Watching Humans Watching, Kehrer Verlag.
2012 Winner of The Swedish Photo book Price, Watching Humans Watching, Kehrer Verlag.
Selected Exhibitions:
Context Art Fair, Miami, USA (2012), SP-ARTE, São Paulo, Brazil (2012), Diplomat, Philadelphia, USA (2012), Gallery Swedish Photography, Berlin, Germany (2011)
In print:
IMA (Japan), Harpers Magazine (USA), Le Monde (Germany/France), Blink (Korea), Ein Magazin uber Orte (Germany), The Collectors Guide to Emerging Art Photography (USA), Capricious Magazine (USA).
www.inkaandniclas.com
Press:
January 2013: Picture reportage of the exhibition Becoming Wilderness on Kopenhagen Artguide
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Photographer: Inka and Niclas.
