Christian Andersson »Cache«

The first work the visitor encounters, untitled disc-shaped object, is an antenna lying on the ground like an abandoned relic. Once receiving radio waves it is now disconnected, rusty and dripping as in the aftermath of a heavy rain. This former receiver now becomes a transmitter, the drops of water making ripples travelling outward through time and space. And it’s precisely this kind of visual echo that shapes the objects we meet in the exhibition. These at-first-glance ready-mades open up for new configurations and readings.

Through this exploration Andersson investigates the very characteristics of the Object. The image covering the entire first wall of the gallery, untitled wallpaper with mesh and spiral, transforms the flat surface by opening up a second optical space within the wall. The image embedded in the pattern is a spatial paradox, namely a two-dimensional sculpture. This sculpture can only be experienced first hand, a concealed object escaping photographic documentation.

This revealing of an embedded alternative purpose also reverberates in the three sculptures entitled Now Wait for Last Year. The annual rings of the oak wood objects can be viewed as an map over time and space, while the wormhole-shape suggests potential shortcuts back and forth through spacetime; a piece of wood illustrating an enigma of cosmic magnitude, revealed within the body of a tree, like a didactic instrument designed for a purpose yet to come.

In 1993 American writer David Foster Wallace commented that the job of fiction has changed - no longer should it make the strange familiar but instead make the familiar strange again, noting that “most ‘familiarity’ is mediated and delusive.” In Andersson’s exhibition each work resembles something we recognise as familiar, while simultaneously describing alternative trajectories and purposes.

Christian Andersson, born 1973 in Stockholm, currently lives and works in Malmö. He recently had solo exhibitions at Museum CIAJG, Guimarães (2018), Kunstmuseum Thun (2015), as well as the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and Moderna Museet, Malmö (both 2011). Lately, his work has been on view in group exhibitions at Forum Arte Braga; Fundación Otazu, Pamplona; SIC, Helsinki (all 2018), Galeria Municipal, Porto; Malmö Konstmuseum, Malmö (2017), Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg; Palais du Tau / FRAC Campagne-Ardenne, Reims; Boymans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam and The Living Art Museum (Nýló), Reykjavik (2016).