3 – 18 February 2024 at Ahlbergshallen, Östersund, Sweden
1 – 10 March 2024 at Detroit Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden
A mixed-media exhibition, ‘Phantom Alley’, examines the elements of the urban environment from an anthropological perspective. In a different installation setting and form, the show debuted in Östersund followed with display in Stockholm during beginning of 2024.
The conceptual background of the exhibition is inspired by Marc Augé’s book, ‘Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995)’, where the author describes the notion of “non-places” as spaces where questions of relationships, history, and identity are erased. Kovacikova’s research stems from her fascination with the above-described elements of the urban landscape, their transformative qualities, and the inspiring energy they radiate.
The city’s energy is like a ghostly pulsation left in the place, waiting to be witnessed. By going from one room to another and wandering among the exhibited works, one can feel this energy, confined in this limited territory, like a narrow passage, stretching from light to dark and vice-versa. Three exhibition areas, each with different lighting settings, are inspired by this energy and create an abstract world, an echo of these extraordinary territories. The artist not only implements this echo in the physical appearance of the exhibition by using the already given spatial layout but also uses it in the process of the artwork’s creation, formally and conceptually.
The majority of the presented artworks were created specifically for this exhibition, using different media and artistic techniques, and they are grouped into three different zones/entities.
The gray zone embraces a series of overprinted etching compositions that bear the image of an abandoned portal. The image eventually disappears in the process through excessive pressure of a composition from a copper plate, causing the series to change from appearance to disappearance, blackness to lightness in the direction of the other rooms accordingly.
A series of scratched paper drawings made visible by charcoal powder is incorporated into the bright zone. These compositions carry digitally distorted images of cityscapes, powerfully carved into a surface that makes drawings become negative reliefs. The violation of the paper surface provides an alternative perspective to the medium of drawing and its relationship to spatiality.
In the dark zone, one can encounter a series of sculptural bodies, and architectural forms that resemble bridge piers. They symbolize strength and resilience, now destroyed and hanging in the air, reminding us of mortality and impermanence. These bodies are just remnants, like skeletons, used to retain the spirit. The spirit that collapsed, and now exists just as a memory.
Through the interaction between material, form, and light, ‘Phantom Alley’ creates a threshold between reality and fiction, where there is neither beginning nor end, only this fragile but extremely harmonious room and us.
Online review (Ahlbergshallen, Östersund, Sweden)
3 – 18 February 2024 at Ahlbergshallen, Östersund, Sweden
ELISKA KOVACIKOVA 