Johan Rosenmunthe
Tuesday, 26 July 2016
Work from Camping at the Solo River @ Tranen.
“Past, future and a compact ungraspable contemporary now appear to be folded into one complex state in Johan Rosenmunthe’s solo exhibition. Rosenmunthe’s immersive installation takes its starting point at the earliest known pre-historic designs done by Homo erectus on seashells found on the Indonesian island of Java. Solo River is the major river that runs through Java and the exhibition connects the physical location of Java to the digital programming language Java in an installation that takes the form of a combination of Land Art and technology.
With a smartphone in hand, visitors – as modern archaeologists – can uncover the hidden layers that exist in the silkscreen paintings on the walls, by photographing them with the smartphone’s flash turned on.
Camping by the Solo River approaches the nature-culture relationship from a macro perspective. The movement from Homo erectus’ craft of instruments and symbolic characters – to our own time’s ‘back to nature’ lifestyle trends zoom in on human nature as an ancient social phenomenon. “I’m interested in our understanding of objects within social systems.” Johan Rosenmunthe explains in the exhibition guide.
Camping by the Solo River focuses on how humans grasp the world through certain technologies. It explores our aesthetisation of our surroundings and the urge to create meaning by putting certain objects in the center of our culture – from the memetic building of sand castles by the shore, to the compulsive need to document our sensations and experiences on photographs.” – text via Tranen