Among Other Things, 2021
solo window exhibition at Galleri Format, Malmö (SE)

Andrén’s photographs depict small things that are difficult to name, together with pieces of plants and fruits and ordinary small objects from everyday life. The things are arranged so as to play with colour and form rather than staging a story, and in some of the images the photographic act seems to have been distracted. The work revolves around the things we surround ourselves with in our daily lives, but attempts a new gaze at them: a gaze without symbolism and narrative.

The place that the images are installed, shopwindows in the city centre of Malmö, also positions the work straight into consumer culture. In a way Andrén imitates commercial imagery and displays that urge us to all the time buy more things, but simultaneously he contrasts the same, by only presenting seemingly meaningless things and not using them as symbols.

There might be something liberating in not ascribing the things anything else than what can be seen in them, both for the things themselves and for the spectator. “To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees”, but maybe also the absence of a name can make us see.

7 translucent vinyl prints mounted onto windows, various dimensions, backlit during night time.