Jan Svenungsson

"stART 98": backstory



For the exhibition "stART 98", open Jan. 6 - Jan. 18, 1998, and curated by Mårten Castenfors as a part of the Stockholm Cultural Capital 98 festivities, 30 artists were invited to do work on three-sided freestanding billboards at different locations in Stockholm.In parallell 40 students from the 5 Swedish Art Academies made posters for bus-stops.

For his work, JS photographed the chosen billboard during midsummer 1997, in such a way that for each side of the billboard the sun came from behind at the moment of the picture. This meant shooting at four in the morning, at noon, and at eight in the evening. These photographs were then manipulated in the computer, eliminating all traces of the billboard (which originally had occupied 30-40 % of the chosen picture frame). Date and time of day when the photographs had been taken were added to the images, and these were then installed on the billboard for the show in January. Due to unexpected colour-changes in the final large printouts it was widely assumed by the audience that the photos had all been shot during Midsummer Night - a view the artist decided not to debate...