MATTS LEIDERSTAM: Mirrored – Seeing Is Believing
Artist Talk
Wednesday, May 12, 2021 / 19.00 EET
Live on Salonul de proiecte’s YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/salonuldeproiecte
Artistic intervention in the EXPO_02_GEN exhibition
May 12 – June 6, 2021
Wednesday – Sunday / 15.00 – 19.00

Salonul de proiecte
Palatul Universul, Building B, 1st floor, Actor Ion Brezoianu 23–25, Bucharest, Romania
Matts Leiderstam is the artist invited to create the second work in the EXPO_02_GEN series, drawing on materials from the Mihai Oroveanu Image Collection. Created specially for the occasion, his work focuses on a single image from the archive, to be found in the “Fashion” category. Searching through the files of scanned photographs placed at his disposal, Leiderstam identified this particular image in two versions: two mirror-image scans of the same negative. He decided to use both versions in order to highlight the geometric composition that results from combining them. Laying a grid over the photographs, he reveals the structure of the image, but at the same time makes us conscious that the camera viewfinder itself imprints a grid on the world. He thereby links the pictorial to the photographic device and emphasises the fact that today we have all become image editors on our telephones and laptops. The more intensely a photographic image is subjected to processes of transfer, archiving and interpretation, the greater the distance between us and the context of its production. The crucial elements connected with the moment of its production become increasingly diffuse or are completely erased, while new events and circumstances gain ground and generate yet further interpretations and speculations. Leiderstam's contribution consists of a series of drawings on printed images accompanied by a text that sets out from the few items of information that he has been able to discover about the image in question.