Katarina Löfström
Katarina Löfström is an artist mainly working with video, although she
has a background of working with three dimensional pieces as well as directing
pop videos and commercials.
Her animated videos, Hang Ten Sunset 2000, and Whiteout 2001,
have been shown in a wide range of contexts, that of course has a large
influence on how the pieces are perceived and read. This is also the intention
of Löfström - she wishes to challenge the borders between art and design;
art and popular culture; or art and kitsch. What happens to an artwork
if it is placed in an art exhibition or as a backdrop for an MTV Awards
show? Off course the perception of the piece alters, which challenge our
preconceptions and our prejudices about art, or about interior-design
for that matter. The animations of Katarina Löfström has some close links
with painting in the expanded field, but the link to the sound in the
pieces are even stronger. The animations are made to match the music,
not the other way around, much like how a pop video is made. Therefore,
to see any of the videos without hearing the music is like watching a
Mondrian being colour blind - you only get half of it. This does not mean
that the videos solely are illustrations to the music, and not that the
music works as a background-sound for the visuals, but that they are inseparable
parts of the final artwork.
Hang Ten Sunset is an animated and abstracted sunset, with a meditative
soundtrack by techno artist Plastikman, and gives strong associations
to psychedelia and surf-culture. Whiteout is an animation based on the
after-images you get in your eyes after staring into the sun, with music
by DJ and performance-artist Terre Thaemlitz.
Katarina Löfström has also made still prints from Hang Ten Sunset,
and if one hasn't seen her videos before, one might get the impression
of a modernist colour-field painting, or pure minimalism, which is Katarina
Löfström's conscious flirt with art history. Some of the prints are made
on velvet, and the result gives strong associations to the decorative
language of the 70's, when velvet prints where common in a lot of homes.
One can't help but to wonder what Clement Greenberg would have said about
this…?
Power Ekroth
Freelance Curator
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