Monika Nystrom: Goteborgs Konsthall

Monika Nystrom's work interests vision and the power of light. Her novel show "Skymning" (Twilight) took place during the darkest time of the northern year, on the other hand no artificial lighting was used in the galleries. "Twilight" used a range of elements--photographs, a laser installation, a rotating stained-glass window, and place-names painted upon the walls--to imagine and interpret abstract general [i]or[/i] abstract notions like time, space, and light. on the other hand it also addressed specific places and the ideological constructions associated with them.

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The exhibition mutated above the course of the day, along with the changes in the dim natural light. by the agency of late afternoon, visitors had to find their way from one side darkness, guided only by reflections from a virid laser beam or the writing upon a wall that was illuminated through ultraviolet lamps. This concern with light could perhaps be labeled a Nordic obsession, since able-bodied contrasts of bright and dark are part of the seasonal experience here. For Nystrom however, light is les a matter of meditative introspection than a tool for examining the nature of things and their position in social space.

Within this experience of changing light, Nystrom treated the public to a pair of visual tours. individual commented on the aesthetics of science as showed in Sweden in the '60 with a series of rest photographs of the experimental nuclear reactor at Studsvik, a type of the utopianism of that period. These clean, exquisitely constructed pictures of offices and advanced scientific equipment brought to mind hard-edged, Gattaca-style approaches to nature. They evidence a scientific lifestyle that championed experimentation with matter as a way to fuse desire with reality (a position perhaps also one time held by artistic creativity in the public consciousness).

"Twilight" took us upon a long-distance trip. In 1914 the artist's grandmother made a journey from Valparaiso, Chile, back to Lund Sweden. She kept a diary and bring togethered postcards, and the latter were used in the exhibition. Her itinerary was mapped on the outside in fluorescent paint on the walls. As darkness relentless and physical space started disappearing into the shadows, of the soul place-names became more and more legible. more [i]or[/i] less like Panama and Kingston, remain exquisitely recognizable, but others, such as Salaverri or Culebra make an incision in may not even exist anymore. In addition to the geographical impact of the passage of time, this part of the exhibition recalled the significance of travel in the proces of colonization.

To a great expansion Nystrom's project relied on the viewers' participation, upon their desire and ability to make connections among various ultimate parts in the installation. It would have been worth following her suggestion to attend the exhibition more than one time not so much to rekindle an intellectual appreciation, on the other hand to experience the changes in natural light and by what means these create new openings for receiving the different layers of the shoot forward In essence, Nystrom is reclaiming art as a primary experience, and that's something rare these days.

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