DESERT MUSIC

" Close your eyes and hear the song of the light:

Noon takes shelter in your inner ear

Close your eyes and open them:

There is nobody not even yourself

Whatever is not stone is light "

— From the poem Native Land by Octavio Paz

The piece of poetry by Octavio Paz has been an inspiration for me for the new series of works. The new series is built like a fragmented mosaic. Varied perspectives and works create an interdependent and connected web. For me, the title of the series, Desert Music, reads as the muted beauty of the desert. I am drawn to barren open vistas.

For me, the desert is like an abstraction - a place that feels at once pre- and post-historic. There are no distractions nor any statements in the desert - it simply exists. Yet, it is full of whispers that are subject to an endless fascination.

Emptiness can be seen as a spatial and visual equivalent of silence. The bare white surface is never the same in shifting light. For me, as the quote goes, seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees. Characteristic features of the works aesthetic are richness of nuance, attention, precision and understatement. Less is enough.

The desert light also has a ruthless quality. At high noon one can experience a feeling not only of momentary blindness but also a sense of disoriented placelessness. An influence on the series has been the composition Become Desert by John Luther Adams. In the chorus of the work only one word is sung out - Luz, Spanish for light.

I try to combine refinement of form with discrete emotive force. I hope gives the works a certain mental distance. As a gesture of politeness towards the spectator I want to allow them a space of one’s own. Silence is an experience of existing, through it we find ourselves listening to our own being.

5.2.-28.2.2021 At Helsinki Contemporary, Bulevardi 10, 00100 Helsinki, Finland

In this new set of works, the theme of quiet and quietude that Andersson frequently explores is joined by the irresistible force of nature and the experience of it.

The wilderness and light are recurrent themes here. The desert is timeless and placeless – the traces left by humankind are ephemeral, and Andersson’s new works are entirely devoid of human figures. The absence of people creates a powerful sense of presence – as if the idea of a human were stronger than their visual presence. The abstract, biomorphic shapes bring to mind rock, dunes, and rays of sunlight. Depicting the sublimity of nature and the idea of a connection between the human and nature have been important for Andersson. In addition to a sense of interconnectedness, he says that something that provokes restlessness can also be present in our experience of nature, since what we are experiencing is greater than a human being. These reductive works seem to epitomize the idea that humans need nature, but that nature does not need humans.

The exhibition work Shimmer had its beginnings in the dazzling light of the desert and in its subtle, momentary changes, and sheds light on the key elements of the whole. The work is lucid, restrained and realized with very little colour. It can be read as a continuation of US 1960s minimalism. Formalism and, in their aesthetics, Japanese culture and art are other important references for Andersson. The exhibition consists of photographs, digitally manipulated images, drawings and works made using adhesive vinyl. Andersson is a versatile maker, and his exhibition is characterized not only by its mode of execution, but also by variations in size, texture and subject matter. There thus arises a dynamic and a rhythm that structure the viewing experience. The contrasts arise out of a juxtaposition of edgeless forms with sinuous and straight lines. The black-and-white photographs balance out the whole, giving it a feeling of documentarity alongside the images manipulated using totally digital technology. After a long break, colour, too, has crept back in: carmine red and pieces of paper in earthy colours disrupt the otherwise subdued black-and-white expression.

Andersson says the working process has been an intuitive one. He worked on several of his previous series of works largely through verbalization and rationality. Now, he lets the process direct itself within a given structure. He wants the distance of the works to create a space for the viewer’s own thoughts and feelings. Daily meditation has given his working process new approaches, quietening the mind is an experience that he also wants to bestow on those who experience his works.

READ MORE ABOUT THE EXHIBITION - HELSINKI CONTEMPORARY GALLERY

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