The main work of 2019, Nocturne (Asbestos Art Space, Helsinki, 2019), is an installation of photo prints and video projection and UV light made for a gallery space. The stage of the work breaks away from previous works. It carries the theme of blue twilight to the scenery that embodies it, to a twilight forest, and a the night-time encounter there with an unknown man. A personal, real experience has been dramatised and poeticised again into an imaginary place. From quick photo shots taken among trees, collages have been edited and printed on paper and attached to a paper-lined wall. The memory of the encounter with an unknown person is deciphered by the text, on which the minimalist video projected on the wall is based. The light from the open windows of the gallery space has a decisive effect on the installation. The viewer sees the collages and video in a colour scale that is a combination of ultraviolet light and outdoor light. What is being created is an aquarium-like space, a surprisingly electronic and virtual impression, a focused hallucination. The mystery of the situation does not seem to be emptied as the image collages rise in their apotheosis to a virtual space that does not seem to obey the laws of matter. The images levitate in their own magical reality.
I stretch the boundaries of the exhibition space. (...) I present the first digital collages. (...) I choose certain things from the image, in which case most of the information disappears.
– Magnus Strandberg |