• Anna Nordquist Andersson, I See Through You, collage 2008-2012. Exhibition photo: Jean-Baptiste Béranger
    Anna Nordquist Andersson, I See Through You, collage 2008-2012. Exhibition photo: Jean-Baptiste Béranger
9 October 2015–14 February 2016

Anna Nordquist Andersson – Seeing Through

Anna Nordquist Andersson, I See Through You (Chicago), collage 2008-2012

Seeing Through

This fall Marabouparken art centre will be presenting two solo shows with artists Anna Nordquist Andersson and David Claerbout, who in different ways use images as tools for seeing. Through their images we can revisit history, memory and even stay lingering in a fleeting moment. Both artists manipulate their material and create complex images that give the spectators a chance to contemplate a piece of time from new perspectives.

In her exhibition Genomsyn / Seeing Through, Malmö-based artist Anna Nordquist Andersson presents different but closely related groups of works that are linked by a wide-ranging interest in the power of the gaze. A central concern of these works is the gaze and the manner in which we can use images as a tool to see. But whose gaze is seeing and what is seen by the gaze? In a feminist and surrealist tradition, Anna Nordquist Andersson creates playful and critical collages by making incisions in the media images that have shaped our perception of reality since the early 1960s. In the group of works entitled I See Through You (2008–2012), Anna Nordquist Andersson uses a scalpel to cut through layers of magazine pages, revealing eyes that gaze out from a spread in which they were never intended to be seen. The transformation that occurs when these primarily female eyes are dislocated from their original context, in one of the magazine’s advertisements, and placed in their new location, on the magazine’s cover or in a feature article, is quite simply dizzying. Seductive and graceful gazes suddenly become threatening, sad, melancholy or humorous.

Anna Nordquist Andersson was born in 1976 in Malmö. She has participated in numerous exhibitions at galleries and art institutions both in Sweden and abroad, including: Galleri Ping-Pong, Malmö (Black Chamber, 2014); Trondheim Kunstmuseum (Lips Painted Red, 2013); Turku Art Museum, Finland (DEJA VU 2012); Peter Lav Gallery, Copenhagen (I See Through You, 2012); Malmö Art Museum (The Real Thing, 2008); Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA (Facades, 2007) and Kunsthal Charlottenburg, Copenhagen (From Dust to Dusk, 2003). In spring 2015 Anna Nordquist Andersson was artist-in-residence at the Nirox Foundation in Johannesburg.

Anna Nordquist Andersson, I See Through You (Women Emancipation), collage 2008-2012
Anna Nordquist Andersson, I See Through You (Women Emancipation), collage 2008-2012
Anna Nordquist Andersson, I See Through You (The Guru), collage 2008-2012
Anna Nordquist Andersson, I See Through You (The Guru), collage 2008-2012
Anna Nordquist Andersson, Black Chamber: For you – only the best / Looking towards tomorrow ... (Pentax), 2014