Energy, Mass and Gravity, 2018, Färgfabriken
The installation Energy, Mass and Gravitation that interweaves the digital and physical worlds in a visually intricate manner. In a poetic way, the artwork represents the complex flows of contemporary society and also touches upon fundamental existential questions. Throughout his artistic career, Hagdahl has explored contemporary phenomena, often utilizing new technology. His artistry raises many of the same questions that Färgfabriken are concerned with in the project Expanded Societies, which has been ongoing since 2016 and discusses how digital technology affects our lives.
This new installation unites the digital and physical worlds in a visually intricate weave. The installation Energy, Mass and Gravitation presented at Färgfabriken combines various media such as painting, moving images, text, sculpture and Readymade; generating a transference between different forms of representation and reality. In this manner, Hagdahl visualizes our world that is divided between a digital and physical reality. An associative chain of events represents the flow of information and images that bombards us constantly. Hagdahl describes his process as both intuitive and planned:
”The confluence of the different elements reveals connections and consistencies that I occasionally predicted, occasionally suspected but also ones that surprised me completely. I am interested in what happens when you create these meeting points between shapes, images and words.”
The artwork creates a room in the exhibition hall where two monumental panels of plexiglass are linked by a floating sculptural system. The structure of this installation makes it impossible to observe the work from one given location. It is however possible to move around the work and view it both from inside and outside of the room; the movements of the viewer can be described as a series of zoom-ins and zoom- outs. ”The specific processes and connections that are triggered by the work, and what effect this will have, depend entirely upon who the viewer is and the context in which the work is shown” says Hagdahl. Hagdahl’s installation balances, both figuratively and literally, between various connections. These connections take the shape of associations and references, as well as physical wires forming a complex web of objects and images held in equilibrium by different weights.