Lina Selander. Excavation of the Image: Imprint, Shadow, Spectre, Thought
56th Venice Biennale
Curated by: Lena Essling
2015.04.09–2015.11.22
For the Venice Biennale, Lina Selander has compiled a group of works and documents describing a migration between utopia and collapse, where technological or ideological development as generators of energy and destruction are inescapably linked. Her films and installations can be read as compositions or thought models, where ideas and conditions are weighed and tested. She examines relationships between memory and perception, photography and film, language and image. The precise, rhythmic editing and use of sound in her films create their own temporality and strong inner pressure. Selander’s works focus on junctures in history where a system or physical place collapses and something new emerges; narratives of mechanical cinema are juxtaposed with digital video, and political or economic systems plummet into something new. Each work constitutes an archive of facts and observations, occasionally in dialogue with other films, art, or literature, and is often based on material with a rich story. Image meets text in a flow, where meanings arise out of the ostensibly unrelated, like verses or echoes through and between the works. Montage is used to create pauses or set images against one another, but also involves the risk of causing perceptual gaps. Meta-montage forms a superstructure in Selander’s cinematic installation – in the contrast between the different meanings and materiality of the films and objects, between projection, light, and shadow.
Commissioner: Ann-Sofi Noring
Venue: Pavilion at Arsenal
Exhibition architecture by studio nāv, Carl Fransson and Thomas Paltiel
With generous support from Lena and Per Josefsson
With thanks to Kvadrat
The artist wishes to thank: NTNU University Museum, Trondheim; The Royal Coin Cabinet, Stockholm
In conjunction with the exhibition, a richly illustrated catalogue was produced by Moderna Museet, including contributions by Lena Essling, film theorist Raymond Bellour, and a conversation between Lina Selander and Oscar Mangione moderated by Kim West. The catalogue is co-published by Moderna Museet and Koenig Books.
Photo: Andrea Rossetti
Open System – Silphium and Other Works
Solo exhibition, INIVA, Institute of International Visual Arts, London
Curated by: Lisa Rosendahl
2015.01.14–2015.03.21
This exhibition comprises three recent films by Selander together with a selection of materials from the artist’s working archive. Characteristic of Selander’s work is the use of film to build dense layers of images and meaning, through which contemporary society is connected with history and the pre-historic. At the core of her enquiry lies a continuous questioning of the concept and materiality of the image. Selander’s work repeatedly asks us to reconsider the status of the image – as representation, memory, object, imprint, or surface – and our relationship to it.
Photo: Thierry Bal
