David Svensson: Lånt lys (Borrowed Light)

With the solo exhibition Lånt lys (Borrowed Light), SPECTA presents a series of new collage works and wall installations by the Swedish visual artist David Svensson. With light as a central focal point in his practice, David Svensson develops works that do not in themselves posses light, but which all capture light, are influenced by light and reflect it back; They borrow the light.

If you delve into David Svensson’s artistic work, you can see traces of a collector. Or rather, of an attention to specific things and their character. In a number of works he has i.a. made installations and public decorations in glass lampshades from the 20th century, works made with projection screens from the 1960s and installations of older objects in luminescent uranium glass. Characteristic of the objects that catch Svensson’s interest is that they all have a relation to light and that they carry a story from a previous life contributing to the new composed narratives of the works.

For a number of years, the object of David Svensson’s gaze has been books. Antiquarian books, which are usually bound, containing clear traces of time and of having been in someone else’s possession. The light also plays a role in the books, as the paper is yellowed and a note randomly placed in or on top of a book has left its mark. Here, the role of light is perhaps more understated, but not unimportant.

In the exhibition Lånt lys (Borrowed Light, a number of works in the ongoing work-series Coverings are presented, where the contents of the books have been removed from the covers. These covers, often with a surface of canvas, dyed paper and perhaps partly with leather, are laid open, completely flat with the outer sides facing up and mounted on raw linen. The collages appear as abstractions of recognizable elements. At the same time, they appear as snapshots, in a play with compositions and formats that could continue. Occasionally, David Svensson has gilded parts of the compositions, and it appears magical when daylight catches the golden parts and adds an unreal shine glowing from the books. With the use of books in particular, Svensson has our attention because we can relate to the book as a place where new perspectives arise.

The exhibition also showcases two installation works entitled Nutida dåvarande framtid #1 and #2 (Present then Future). They each consist of a large circle of dials from wrist watches, respectively front and back, where the light is caught in the surfaces of the dials. With these dials we normally wear on the wrist, time is illustrated as a larger conceptual matter that goes far beyond the time of the individual.

David Svensson (SE, 1973) lives and works in Malmø, Sweden. David Svensson has exhibited in a number of museums e.g. Malmø Museum of Art, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Wanås Konst, Hallands Museum of Art, Artipelag in Stockholm, Brandts in Odense (DK), Nirox Foundation in Johannesburg and the Curitiba Biennale in Brazil. You can find more than 30 public artworks in both Sweden and internationally, among others Life Line at Odenplan Station in Stockholm and Eyelight Lane in central Auckland. This coming summer David Svensson together with artist Anna Nordquist Andersson will do a workshop leading to a larger scaled work of art at Dynamo Art Factory in San Macello piteclio in Italy, followed by an exhibition in October of 2024. David Svensson is represented at museums, in public and in private collections in both the Nordic countries as well as internationally.

Kilde: SPECTA