Joel Danielsson & Louise Öhman
Currents
2.5 — 14.5 2023
The
exhibition CURRENTS relates to the French revolutionary Louis Auguste
Blanqui and the period that he was imprisoned at Fort du Taureau in
Bretagne. In 1871, at the same time as the barricades were built on the
streets of Paris during the Paris Commune, Blanqui were in his prison
cell writing the book L’éternité par les astres (Eternity by the Stars).
An astronomical hypothesis on the copy written through the language of
photography, dominated by the possibility of reproduction and
recurrence, where words like copy, stereotype and cliché shapes
Blanqui's cosmos. Through his political conviction and his critique of a
possible progressive movement, he saw a world where everything is
repeating eternally. A cosmic drama without beginning and end, where it
is only the fortunate bifurcation that can make us move forward. At
the same time, in Paris, the communards staged the revolution in front
of the camera, through the technological medium that many citizens met
for the first time. Tempted to create the image of the successful
revolution, they saw new possibilities in the camera's way of capturing
time, a will that eventually led to unforeseen consequences.
CURRENTS
takes a special interest in how Blanqui saw the potential in the copy
and the photographic image's ability to both capture and release.
Joel
Danielsson and Louise Öhman take a special interest in the ontology of
the image, through its haunting qualities and the transforming,
animating or petrifying movements it may perform. Through a constant
revision of the structure within the image, its own materiality and its
technology of representation. They use archived and found material bound
together by a method of association, in a network of image and text
that constantly negotiates their own relations and questions their own
narratives. A re-appearing element has been the human will to disrupt
the progression of time and the endeavor to restore its previous
positions, through the material traces that can be seen after
iconoclastic actions and historical events.
Joel
Danielsson (1988, SE) and Louise Öhman (1989, SE) have worked together
since 2014. They are based in Stockholm, Sweden. They received their BA
in Fine Art at The Art Academy of Bergen, Norway, in 2017, and their MA
in Fine Art at Umeå Academy of Fine Art, Sweden, in 2021.