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Artist Statement                             

Index of Works

  _{A N D Y}                                                                         
        A L L E N — O L i V A R                       

Andy Allen-Olivar is a multimedia based artist working with photography, film, installation, text and most recently performance.

My artistic endeavours unfold using the absence and control of light and optics – darkrooms, lightboxes, camera obscuras, dia-slideshows, burials, lost stories. Imagery to find ghosts and traces of illumination and meaning.

Using these, I aim to research feelings of ephemerality and a way of seeing. To create a constellation of details – personal, historical, observed, speculative,  overheard. The details are hard to explain, but when placed together, they become something that perhaps could be defined, but I feel something would be lost if we tried to do so.

My work is dedicated to scientists and hoarders and those who bend their knees to see; to diggers and explorers; to what is written on the back of things, and to what is not; to unelaborated memories, and pasts which somehow rhyme with them; to pasts that are not necessarily one’s own; to history, to language and to ventriloquism, to traces and to rituals; to shortcomings; to a place changed over time; to hangovers and jet lag; to constructivist anthropology, parallel presents, slow magic; to the flavour and vividness of trying for a long time; to the thing that is missing and defines what it is missing from; to saving it for later; to the familiar, unconnected, out of reach; to myth; to proof; to knowing how something works, and still be surprised and humbled by it anyway; to hold something up to the light and feel the gravity in your feet. 

Previously, he worked in the postal industry.

I TELL YOU FAR TOO    MUCH (2025)

KOIK CONTEMPORARY, CDMX, MEXICO

Stained glass window made of obsidian and enameled glass featuring text from a conversation with my aunt in Spanish. The text reproduces her words:

“With that, I am almost certain that they operated on my eyes by cutting a cross. (And even though I cannot see her, I know she is tracing a cross in the air with her hands like a priest.) Yes, that thing is incredibly sharp, isn’t it? Be careful not to cut yourself!”

The work is illuminated with candles shining through the glass.

Part of the group show ‘Entre Azul y Buenas Noches’ with Olga Krüssenberg, Rasmus Richter and Tuva Bkörk.



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Supported by Konstnärsnamden and Helge Ax:son Johnsons stiftelse

UNFORTUNATE TROUT (2025)

FOTOGRAFISKA, STOCKHOLM

Shown in Fotografiska as part of the group show ‘Meanwhile’. A triptych of three light boxes containing archival photos, found photos, stolen photos, photos taken by the artist, collected objects, saints, gifts, debris, photocopies, tearsheets, material hidden from sight, and text etched on glass. [200 x 160 cm each]

ELEPHANTS AFTER THE RAIN (2024)

PUBLIC WORK, HANINGE KOMMUN

Six Lightboxes

The work tries to understand the city of Buenos Aires as a sum of its parts – with its workers rubbing dust into marvellous marble entrances, lost dogs; tunnels that will last forever and buses that never come. Inspired by Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities', we are shown small sun cats that catch our eye of a place that feels familiar, but maybe we have never been to, or perhaps we have dreamed something similar to it. A fictional city made up of imagery, objects, and snippets heard in passing.

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Supported by Haninge Kommun and Centrum För Fotografi