Luminous Reign

Kosminen 4/11 - 28/11 2021

The exhibition Luminous Reign by the artist Johan Österholm consist of a series of recent photographic and sculptural works dealing with the topic of light pollution. Lending their title to the exhibition, two decapitated street lanterns are turned into light sculptures bearing impressions of night skies of centuries past, while similar street lights, now erect, can be seen in the altered photographic typology After Marville (Whiteouts). 

For the series Antique Skies, Österholm’s process begins with the unsheathing of an X-Acto knife. To the horror of librarians everywhere, he carefully slits out blank or nearly blank sheets of yellowing paper (endpapers, for example) from nineteenth-century astronomy tomes, which he unearths in antiquarian bookshops across Europe and later carefully dissects in his Stockholm studio.