EXHIBITIONS / JANICKE REKSTEN

08.10.2009 to 31.10.2009

Janicke Reksten's photographs and films depict various physical states, from pleasure and pain to ecstasy and boredom. The female body, including the artist's own, is submitted to a catalogue of procedures to elicit strange forms and images for the lens of the camera. Starting from the possibilities of simple movements and positions -- using materials such as glass, blood and steel -- Reksten's works render often shocking and abject scenes beautiful.
Displaying its origins in seventies performance art and science fiction cinema, the photographs seem to function as documentation of private, almost domestic games played by the artist with herself or others, allowing the body to be used and manipulated for aesthetic purposes. The fragility and sensitivity of skin is described by extreme close ups of body parts reminiscent of medical photographs, yet subdued by a soft and playful edge. An irritating scene of an eyeball being licked becomes pretty, and a breathing stomach seems convulsive.
In an age of absurd technological advances Janicke Reksten's photographs remind us of our ever increasing distance from our own bodies.

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