June 2–August 26, 2018
Gert Aspelin, Lena Bergendahl, Ingela Ihrman, Anna Ling, Åsa Maria Kraft, Mariana Manner, Ursula Nistrup, Filippa Pettersson, Amalie Smith
This exhibition showcases nine artists active in the area surrounding Lunds konsthall. Its title, Environs, alludes to the region around Lund but also constitutes an attempt to regard these environs as equally important as its human inhabitants.
It is too easy for humans today to retain a self-image as separated from other species, from other organic and inorganic materials. Humanism and the enlightenment helped create anthropocentric views on history and the world. Yet contemporary art, philosophy and science often understand humankind as a small part of a larger whole. The creative human being today tends to be inscribed into the Biosphere in its entirety.
The contemporary ecological debate keeps returning to cycles and loops. Rather than accepting the segmented and compartmentalized view of reality prevalent in agriculture and industry, all aspects of reality are acknowledged as profoundly enmeshed, as a continuum of gradual differences.
Environs allows its constituent parts to join each other in twisted, pleated formations. The exhibition connects to algorithms, blossoming cacti, fossils, dying technology, the acoustics of stone, sand, nuclear fission and recycling.
The participating artists all have diverse backgrounds and modes of expression; they belong to different generations and have chosen different paths in life. Something that unites them is that they all seem firmly rooted in an interest articulated by this exhibition: soil, sand, sediment (and, further down, minerals and fossils)—phenomena that yield energy but thereby also cause global warming.
The exhibition may be read as an account of how humankind has conquered and exploited land throughout history. It corresponds to a horizontal view reflecting the encounter between geological and human time, but also a vertical movement following water, plants and bodies descending through the underworld and ascending through the sky.
