Absalon Kirkeby Still Fantasy

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Absalon Kirkeby Still Fantasy Published by Disko Bay

|…There have been precedents of abstraction with photography from early 20th Century experiments with photograms, Vortographs, and mid-Twentieth-century experiments in Konkrete Fotografie, or the photography of post-AbEx forms of photographic experimentation with chemigrams and darkroom light painting. Recently, artists from Wolgang Tilmans to Daisuke Yokota have experimented with abstraction. Still, the form has yet to be recognized for its potential to flatten or reduce photographic representation en masse into the void of nothingness-abstract photography, as pictorialist photography before it relies on painting to guide its intentions, and this adequately bridges the reality of its failure. I can only surmise this moment of photographic reckoning will occur with technology when it can leave other mediums and representations entirely. Contemporary artists like Jörg Sasse and, more recently, Jonas Bendiksen has suggested a para-reality with photography that portends a relationship with AI and generated forms of untruth and the unrepresentative. Perhaps our Road to Damascus moment in photography will be rectified when we absolve the medium of any responsibility to forms of representation…”

 

 

Original Press Release and Specifications

 

Disko Bay is thrilled to present the acclaimed Danish artist Absalon Kirkeby’s latest book Still Fantasy, a kaleidoscopic refraction of images. Kirkeby presents various image types seen through the extended eye, accessing a state of intimate reality riddled with meaning. X-rays, objects turned into patterns, machines, signs, and urban sites create a sense and narrative of a place that elucidates something revelatory.

Kirkeby employs digitally manipulated photography across various genres to engage the quotidian with a surreal and dreamlike gaze, evoking artificial experiences through mediation and abstraction. The work highlights themes on the opacity and complex experience of life today, offering subtle comments on contemporary society.

Absalon Kirkeby (b. 1983) is a Danish artist who lives and works in Copenhagen. Kirkeby graduated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Goldsmiths College, and Zürcher Hochschule der Künste. He has exhibited in Denmark, Sweden, Spain, USA, and his work is included in the collections of Banco de Espana, The Danish National Museum of Photography, and The Danish Arts Foundation. Previous publications include Small Guide (2020), Air Craft Art (2015), Feriemodel (2015), Palm (2012), and Pseudo (2009).

 

Print Edition also available with a signed print

  • Printed embossed hardcover
  • 20,5 × 27 cm
  • 216 pages
  • 159 full color plates
  • Edition of 750
  • Printed in Denmark by Narayana Press
  • Published 16 September 2022
  • ISBN 978-87-973526-1-8
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