Bildmuseet presents two new video installations by Annika Larsson. With a focussed and graphic idiom, often involving a strong fascination for the perfect and artificial surface, Larsson examines the conventions, acts, and rituals of men and power in her work. Simultaneously, her works manifest the ambivalencies, insecurities and nakedness of the individual.
Poliisi (17 minutes, 2002) relates a haunting and suggestive night scene in a large, empty city square, where a man in jockey-like attire is being confronted by three men in police uniforms, wearing bullet-proof vests, Plexiglass shields, and helmets. Despite these outer attributes signalling violence, agression and protection, the characters' actual and inner relations and motives remain mysterious and difficult to define. The Tobias Bernstrup soundtrack is both cold and hypnotic.
Bend, Part II (13 minutes, 2002), in part computer-animated, shows a lone man's slow and protracted session in front of a computer screen. The man seems to have been caught in an almost motionless or khatatonic state, stiffly controlled and without own will. The soundtrack to this piece presents an organic and bodily feel, while the intensity and details of the situation are clinical and reserved.
Poliisi and Bend, Part II are being shown in Sweden for the first time. Annika Larsson (b. 1972) lives and works in Stockholm. She graduated from the Royal University College of Fine Arts (Kungliga Konsthögskolan) in Stockholm in 2000 and has since then had solo exhibitions in Geneva, New York, London, and other places. The artist will be present for the opening of the exhibition at Bildmuseet.
