Inka & Niclas Lindergård, SE

In their lens-based practice, Inka and Niclas Lindergård recurrently delve into the realm of the overly consumed portrayals of nature.

Throughout their work, the artist duo has investigated the mechanics of vision and our relationship with nature as depicted through the camera lens. Despite classical training in the photographic medium, there is a constant urge to challenge its conventions, to playfully explore what photography can be in the encounter with new materials and forms.

Today, photography and the photographic gaze have become so prevalent that most of us now possess a developed visual perception. We know at increasingly younger ages when the lighting conditions are optimal for a certain type of image or from which angle a landscape is most ideally depicted. With the help of digital platforms, nature photographs are consumed in a way never before seen. We have access to innumerable sunsets, seascapes, and depictions of the most magnificent northern lights—to the extent that the eye becomes saturated with the heightened beauty. The abundance simply numbs us. How does this affect our perception?

Inka & Niclas’s work is not primarily driven by exploration—they do not want to report, nor seek definitive answers to given questions. Instead, the artist duo depicts their participation in the viewing of nature that they previously have also pointed out in others.

The series 4K Ultra HD also consists of sculptural elements (Adaptive Colorations)—sharply cropped excerpts from photographs that have emerged from the two-dimensional and become amorphous shapes. The dissimulation of the image reaches yet another dimension in the meeting between the photograph and the print surface—hand-sculpted and softly curved plasters. Dipped in a dissolved fluid version of the photograph, the irregular plasters further abstract the motif.

This procedure is rooted in a sensory exploration that must be liberated from the initial conceptualization that once sparked the process. What follows is a profound investigation into the material.

Extract from the text by Olga Krzeszowiec Malmsten in the book Extensions, published by Art & Theory, 2024.

Inka (Finland) and Niclas (Sweden) Lindergård are an award-winning artist duo who work primarily with photography-based art. They have been working together since 2007 and live in Stockholm, Sweden. Focusing on reinterpreting the landscape through photography, photo-sculpture, and installation, they have developed a coherent body of work that includes already iconic series such as The Belt of Venus and the Shadow of the Earth (2013), Becoming Wilderness (2013), Vista Point (2014), Family Portraits (2015), 4K Ultra HD (2018), Luminous Matter (2019), and most recently, in 2022/2023, the series Extensions and Sunset Photography, which consists of photographic works and sculptures.