EIGHT TIMES FOLDED
(2022)



GALLERI KONSTFACK

An exhibition of interchangeable light boxes.

The project explores photography as ventriloquism, where the voice is not quite heard clearly – perhaps as though heard through a phone call with a bad signal, or in a language you can only grasp a few words of – the television has been muted. As a result, the installation hopes to be a holistic sequence that presents itself with parallel narratives of a story being told, where these narratives sometimes are revisions rather than separate. Or that there is something missing, and the thing that is missing is the thing that defines it. Of negation and a feeling of loss, absence and insufficiency as a foundation. We are left detecting the history of a place and a time that is hard to place, impossible even. Paradigms of an adventure or an incident where the story is left out, and only the clues are left. A series of motifs – the dog in its different form for example comes as a comfort, a background character, a main character in a funeral.

There are also small interjections of text that talk of names, full names; of sounds that would go unnoticed if someone didn’t point them out; of the land swelling, and of how fish perceive the Sun.

We are left to examine this evidence through peculiar details and the minutiae, speculative narratives, a scrutiny of a past that is not necessarily one's own. Through associations, magical realism, proofs of existence.

This material is comprised of  archival photos, found photos, stolen photos, photos taken by the artist, collected objects, saints, gifts, debris, photocopies, tearsheets, material hidden from sight, and text is displayed inside lightboxes made up of salvaged wood, stolen wood, wood taken from a tree struck by lightning, old doors and construction planks.

For my mother and my father; for Carlos and Ita; for my brothers Josh, Matty and Tom. Of course, of course. All of which I have the pleasure of being alike.



Supported by the Axel N Andersson's foundation













a.allenolivar@gmail.com