Maria Hedlund. No title. Colour photograph, 104 x 144 cm

The surface of Maria Hedlund's new photographs undulate and sway. The pictures show shirt patterns, but it is uncertain what is behind the common checks and stripes. Lack of focus forces the eye to roam and the perspective changes as I view them. A feeling of dizziness and unease occurs. Nothing is for granted.

Maria Hedlund uses photography's ability to transform the most common object into something radically strange, without turning into abstraction. Motifs are from the everyday, the easily recognisable, which is why their effect is unpleasantly strong.

Seldomly or never have people appeared in Maria Hedlund's pictures. Instead, the presence of people is manifested in traces and remains. As, for example, in the series of pictures `Hemma hos mig' (In My Home) that we have previously shown at Galleri Index and this autumn will be her contribution to the Sydney Biannual. In these pictures the focus was on the dirt that human activity leaves behind. Dirt that represents man's presence as well as absence.

The movement between presence and absence returns in these new works, but here the body has come one step closer. Unwillingly and irresolute, something that we can assume is a body is glimpsed. Something twists and turns. I am not absolutely certain what it is.

"The inventor of the photographic art, was the inventor of the most inhumane of all arts. To him we owe the ultimate distortion." Thomas Bernhard

Helena Holmberg

Welcome!

This exhibition is part of XPOSEPTEMBER - Stockholm's photo-festival, made possible with support from Stockholm European Culture Capital. Thanks to AVANTI Färgstudio