The traces

The exhibition consists of a number of elements which, in sum, comprise a total installation in the gallery space. In the middle of the room is placed a three-piece suite, carried out in wood and with prominent mint-green marbling. From here, guests can watch a TV screen, on which is displayed a dynamic picture which at first appears to resemble a whirling snowstorm against the night sky. The cables leading from the screen, however, reveal that this scenario is not taking place in the open air, but is rather a transmission from a box-like concrete structure located near the entrance. The motif seen on the screen is repeated on the walls of the room, though here in a static and frozen form, as a series of photographs which look more like pictures of a starry sky. At the rear of the room an ice structure can be seen, shaped like an island landscape which is growing forth from the white rear wall of the gallery. Sandegård's installation initially confronts the observer with a number of staged illusions and phantasms: the simulated marbling, a snowstorm which is not a snowstorm, „constellations“ and ice that has a life of its own and can grow on the walls. All of these are things which, more or less convincingly, claim to be one thing, but conceal in reality something else. Behind the trickery, which also demonstratively reveals itself in the kitsch marbling of the three-piece suite, lie a number of possibilities for the creation of forms and images which, in interplay with the observer, express and reveal themselves through the installation. The breathing and perspiration of visitors, for example, sends water molecules into the air of the room, which are then manifested as ice on the rear wall. Movement creates turbulence in the room which influences the „snowstorm“ on the TV screen – which is in reality a magnified picture of the movement of microscopic dust particles. The room's smallest parts are thereby made concrete and manifest in the exhibition, via physical processes which display or gradually realise the hidden potential that lies in our surroundings generally. Via the involvement of the observer in these processes, further questions are raised regarding the relationship between the subject and the object being observed. Is it possible, as some parts of the scientific world claim, to observe the world objectively, or will human thought, presence and actions always leave traces?