LIMINAL SPACES

 

Extract from the press release by the curator Vasco Forconi:

Altered*  is a paradoxical homage to the Dutch painter Salomon Van Ruysdael. A photograph of his River Landscape with Ferry is sent by Karl Patric Näsman to a company in Xiamen, China, specialized in the serial reproduction of artworks, to commission a copy of the painting.
At the same time, the artist travels to Nijenrode in the Netherlands, looking for the exact location where Van Ruysdael’s canvas was painted in 1649, only to find out that the landscape has become almost
unrecognizable. In the attempt to reconstruct the original perspective of the painting, the artist photographs the surroundings of Nijenrode and other fragments of Swedish landscapes, producing a digital montage – an ideal reenactment of the painting – that is then exhibited next to the copy of Salomon Van Ruysdael.

Cattle Resting in Landscape with Riverside Castle and Rainbow Beyond**  is an ongoing project started in 2012 with the purchase on eBay of an 18th century Dutch painting, most likely executed by a follower of Aelbert Jacobsz Cuyp.
As for the above mentioned piece, the artist commissions a copy of the artwork to a
specialized Chinese company. After receiving the painting, he takes a picture of it and sends it to the same company commissioning another reproduction. The entire procedure is repeated several times. Copy after copy, in a process of ironic mise en abyme, the overall composition, the color palette, and brushstrokes of the original artwork are slowly transformed, leaving room to the painterly gestures of tens of anonymous employees working for the several reproduction companies commissioned by the artist.

Liminal Spaces: a Midsummer Show opened between 19 June and 30 June 2019 at @_konsthall, Stockholm

Works by Weronika Bela/ Ivar Hagrén, Jasmin Daryani and Karl Patric Näsman in dialogue with Vasco Forconi, a curator based in Rome, Italy

* Altered, an oil reproduction of the famous painting Ferry Boat with cattle on the River Vecht near Nijenrode by the 17th century Dutch artist Salomon van Ruysdael.
The reproduction was made in Xiamen, China by the company ”Supra-Art” and is considered to be of ”museum quality”. The Photograph is a digital montage made of several images from Nijenrode in the Netherlands and other places in Sweden to reenact and resemble the original depiction.

 

** The original Old Master painting Cattle Resting in a Landscape with Riverside Castle and Rainbow Beyond was painted by a follower of the Dutch artist Aelbert Jacobsz Cuyp (1620-1691) probably in the 18th century, The Netherlands.

Once in my belongings after I had bought it back in 2012, I took a picture of the painting and contacted a company in China specializing in making reproductions of the worlds greatest art works and ordered a reproduction of it. With the resembling of a factory the production is divided amongst several different workers, all of them with different skills to produce the best result as possible. When I received the reproduction I took a picture of it and repeated the procedure stated above. The workers are reproducing one of their own works and the motif starts shifting in color and details from the original painting. The second reproduction and so forth is becoming a work of its own and not just a reproduction of an Old Master painting.