Dead Angle
Pigment print 88 X 112 CM
Evil Hat
Pigment print 132 X 103 CM
Kick-Off
Pigment print 88,5 X 112,5 CM
Macro Music
Pigment print 132,5 X 103 CM
Silk Road
Pigment print 132,5 X 103 CM
Natural Numbers
Pigment print 132,5 X 103 CM
Casino
Pigment print 53 X 44 cm
Björkholmen Gallery Foto: Åke E:son Lindman
Jenny Källman´s work do not depict scenes or places; they create their own spaces. The camera is always the place where things originates, things brought into being at the time when the image is “shot”. Her work creates visual playgrounds of sorts, where chance also is cast as an important player.
At the same time, these spaces are also closed and heavily regulated, with a subtle play of contrasts, sparsely or sharply lit. Chance and control. Playground and prison. In between them they create the the astounding visual energy that radiates from Källman´s images, fascinating, literally spell-binding.
In a new body of work, Casino (2018), she is pushing the limits of set rules, freedoms and limitations, even further. As the title, Casino, implies, we find ourselves in a world where it is impossible to differentiate between an object and its image, reality from illusion. We are in a spectral world where “signs” of happiness and success are the only thing ascribed real value. Also the characters who do appear, people in different shapes or poses, are only ´bodies´ seen through, or replicated in, glass-walls or mirrors. They appear for a moment, like a ghost image or a mirage, only to dissolve, mise-en-abyme, in the great mirror hall of the casino.
As simple bystanders of what is happening, we can be sure of only one thing: that the same image we see appears on the monitor screens of the security personel in the guard room.
In a world where chance rules, nothing is left to chance.
Prison or playground?
The art of Jenny Källman shies away from everything easily identifiable, but in return manages to create a visual universe where every detail appears in its own light, at once tangible and evasive.