Inka & Niclas, 4K Ultra HD IX, 2018

The acclaimed artistic duo Inka and Niclas Lindergård primarily create photography-based works. Their diverse practice draws inspiration from the aesthetics of popular culture, examining its influence on how we perceive nature. Inka & Niclas explore the spectrum between idealised beauty and the absurd, blending existential themes with a hint of flamboyant triviality. Perceptions presents a selection of their works, exhibited for the first time at Dorothée Nilsson Gallery.

How does one summarise a practice spanning nearly two decades?

„Write about ebb, flow, and Google. Palm trees backlit by the sun. Buttercups and cow parsley becoming the cosmos. Slumbering snow-covered winter landscapes. Northern lights. Nightly walks to a chosen location with sleepy children in your arms. Write about travels. Along the local roadside. To Finland. To the ends of the earth. The ever-growing mass of nature images that numbs us. Write about the visual perception and the dissolution of the static surface of photography. Mental snapshots and physical pictures. Objects born from photography, but that have become something of their own kind, free from categorisation. All testify to short excerpts of events, in actual places, at a certain time. Moments from a shared practice, a shared life. What is now also their children’s reality.

The photographic medium possesses a violent power. Photography creates beauty, but it can also consume the nature it depicts – like the generic image of a palm tree at sunset that has adorned printed calendars, beach towels, and posters since the 80s. Consumed by popular culture, the motif became so saturated that it still tends to touch on kitsch aesthetics. As a result, viewing an actual palm tree at sunset can seem trivial to someone who has seen too many reproduced depictions.

In their lens-based practice, Inka and Niclas Lindergård recurrently delve into the realm of the overly consumed portrayals of nature. Throughout their work, the artist duo has investigated the mechanics of vision and our relationship with nature as depicted through the camera lens. Despite classical training in the photographic medium, there is a constant urge to challenge its conventions, to playfully explore what photography can be in the encounter with new materials and forms. Today, photography and the photographic gaze have become so prevalent that most of us now possess a developed visual perception. We know at increasingly younger ages when the lighting conditions are optimal for a certain type of image, or from which angle a landscape is most ideally depicted. With the help of digital platforms, nature photographs are consumed in a way never before seen. We have access to innumerable sunsets, seascapes, and depictions of the most magnificent northern lights – to the extent that the eye becomes saturated with the heightened beauty. The abundance simply numbs us. How does this affect our perception?“

– Text by Olga Krzeszowiec Malmsten, from the book Inka & Niclas: Extensions, Art & Theory Publisher, 2024

Inka & Niclas Lindergård’s work has been shown extensively since the start of their collaboration eighteen years ago. Among their recent exhibitions are ‚Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocene‘, NASHER Museum of Art at Duke University, North Carolina (2024), ‚Extensions‘, Haus am Kleistpark, Berlin (2024), ‚Human / Nature‘, Fotografiska, New York (2024), ‚Rethinking Landscape‘, Museo Fortuny, Venice (2023), ‚Return to Nature‘, Pearl Art Museum, Shanghai (2023), ‚In Bloom‘, Fotografiska, Stockholm (2023), ‚Family Portraits‘, Museum Quartier, Vienna (2022), and ‚Destination: From the Seaside Resort to the Cosmos – International Biennial of Contemporary Art of South America‘, MAR Museum, Mar del Plata (2021). For Circulations(s), Le Centsquartre-Paris (2021) their work was shown throughout 11 metro stations of Paris. Their work is included in private and public collections such as Moderna Museet, Gothenburg Museum of Art, Public Art Agency Sweden, SE, Fries Museum, NL, Edith Maryon Foundation, CH and Arendt Collection, LU. They were awarded the EMOP Arendt in 2021.