Nordic moods

May 30 – September 14, 2008

NORDIC MOODS

- Landscape Photography of Our Time

Spellbinding images of midnight sunlight, bleak scrap heaps in South Funen, staged stories of people and landscape – NORDIC MOODS embraces the many different modes of Nordic landscape photographers working today. These seventy-five works by 24 Nordic artists are about us and our relationship to nature, as well as to culture.

Landscape, as depicted by today’s Nordic photographers, is sensuous and evocative. The artists have an eye for beauty and romance, drama and staging. At the same time, they critically interrogate the traditional, romantic landscape, pointing out new directions for landscape in art.

The exhibited works show a wide range of ways to portray and employ landscape. Some artists photograph landscape through a classic, romantic gaze, with an eye for grand, majestic nature. Moreover, confirming or reflecting on the notion of a special Nordic mood in the landscape, many of them point beyond a classic, romantic landscape representation.

The Human Imprint
The meeting of nature and culture is a point of focus for several of the artists. Their landscapes hold conspicuous traces of human activity. Pictures of railroad tracks, plastic refuse, construction sites and concrete tunnels contest conventional notions of unspoiled, beautiful nature.

Other artists use landscape as a stage or a set for storytelling. There, anything can happen, as the line between dream and reality is blurred. There we find spectacular landscapes, along with uncanny scenarios and poetic tales of everyday life. The narratives and plots are generally open-ended and left up to us.

In their various ways, the works show that the concept of a Nordic mood in a landscape photograph is linked to whoever is doing the seeing – and to where and when the seeing is done. The exhibition documents the multitude of ways that modern people relate to landscape: it is both out there somewhere and inside us.

The participating artists include Per Bak Jensen (Denmark), Lars Tunbjörk (Sweden), Olafur Eliasson (Iceland), Elina Brotherus (Finland) and A. K. Dolven (Norway).

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