Erik Östensson
Tjärnen
(a small forest lake with no water coming in and no water going out)
Jul 6 - Aug 13, 2023
It lies there quiet and dark, far up in the north of Sweden. The forest stands densely around its edges as if to hide a secret. To find it, you must know the right path. If you follow the path, you suddenly stand there in front of the black and almost always glossy surface. The lake lies there like the black eye of the forest looking up at the sky.
I moved from the north of Sweden a long time ago. But every summer I return to rest and meet my family. That's when I visited the lake. During the day to take a swim and to cool down and at dusk to examine its surface.
It was not a conscious choice, but again and again I carried the heavy large format camera out into the woods to the edge of the lake. There was something about that dark surface that fascinated me. It seemed bottomless but at the same time it reflected the stars. The surface was like a border between two worlds. For me, the surface became a symbol of everything that lies between me and what I strive and long for.
Many of the photographs in this project are made by the lake. Maybe you could say that they all are, because it was the same surface I examined when I came home. Even though I was sitting at home in my kitchen, it was as if I was sitting there by the edge of the lake, looking down into its darkness.
Photographer Erik Östensson (Swedish, b. 1978, he/him/his) is known for his surrealistic, deceptively simple, and unique pictorial compositions. His poetically performative images reveal an emotional interplay in the depiction of the interaction between people, objects, and landscapes. Everything appears to be interconnected in harmonious coexistence, whereby new relationships in materials and form develop. Östensson encourages the viewer to discard learned habits of seeing and to look with the eyes of a child, who has only just begun to discover the world. Past notions are superseded, and the meaning of known objects expanded.
Östensson studied at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York and the University of Umeå in Sweden. His works are regularly exhibited in galleries, museums, and at festivals in and beyond Scandinavia. He published two books: I will take care of you, Journal (2012) and Untitled, Kehrer Verlag (2019). He lives and works in Oslo.