David Svensson

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Anna Nordquist Andersson

The Swedish artist and photographer Anna Nordquist Andersson has for many years been interested in the photograpic gaze and it ´s gender coding. In a seemingly simple but yet very inticate image study she deconstructs the prejudice of the male gaze. The concept of deconstruction is here for once completely in effect – it is exactly what Andersson does. Her method is to see through, elucidate and in various ways ask questions about underlying structures. In her latest work 'Black Chamber' she reuses photographs, media images and texts as readymades. Her starting point is the old ads and magazine pages from camera manufactures during the 60s and 70s such as Hasselblad, Nikon, Canon, Olympus and others. All ads are from the American magazine LIFE, famous for it`s photojounalism. What interested her when she started working with this material, was the clearly male language in the ads that unabashedly targeted at a male consumer. This is Canon's slogan: 'Finally, an SLR camera that even your wife can use'. Another example: 'Where man goes, there goes the Hasselblad'. Her method is a photogram, they are contact printed so that both sides are superimposed in a single image, which then resembles an x-ray. The work involves conceptual work on what's under the surface and thus shed light on important issues.


David Svensson

The Swedish artist David Svensson’s works range from the maximally expansive – public space, the city and our social relationships – to the minimal and contracted – the almost empty page of a book and the barely perceptible way a sheet of paper speaks to us.

'Absent Stories' is the title of David Svensson collages made out of blank pages from books from the 19th century and onwards. The pages, just like the books, have various formats and paper qualities. The blank pages that lead and follow texts in books, tinted by age, gently marked with pentimenti from inserted notes and clippings, are far from mute. The artist is interested in the stories they hold. The very life of the book is imprinted into these fragile pages. The book is the vehicle for transporting the story; the blank page is in fact not blank at all. The support for the story tells a story. Story is both noun and verb. As a verb, it means to decorate something with images of scenes.

15 February 2015 - 10 March 2015

'Maboneng Maglite'

The Swedish artist David Svensson’s works range from the maximally expansive – public space, the city and our social relationships – to the minimal and contracted – the almost empty page of a book and the barely perceptible way a sheet of paper speaks to us.

Svensson has made a new outdoor urban light piece called Maboneng with large scale Maglite torches which is to be installed in The Maboneng Precinct in Johannesburg. Maboneng also translates as 'Place of Light' from Zulu, which is the most widely spoken language in South Africa. The Maglite refers to safety, brutality and violence as it is both a flashlight and a ready substitute for a baton. Security and police personnel often carry Maglite flashlights at night and in dark locations, with the beam that can disorient an attacker.

The urban light installation, 'Maboneng' will be activated on the evening of the 14th of February. It will be a temporary installation with a view to instigating questions and solutions regarding the long term solutions for lighting Maboneng in a unique and meaningful way..

David Svensson is currently a resident artist at the Nirox Foundation, Cradle of Humankind Artist Residency program.

14 February 2015 - 14 February 2015