Susanne Lund Pangrazio (SE): The sun sets over us

16. 5 - 3. 7. 2024
Curator: Lenka Sýkorová
Photo: Markéta Bendová
Video: Tereza Havlínková

We dream of mountains. We want to conquer them, reach the summit and be the kings of the world. But as we climb them, we understand the infinitesimality of our own size and their indifference to us. Walking through the crevices, valleys, and ledges high up in the mountain range, the ragged landscape brings us further into its realm and further away from our own world. The vista beneath us becomes but a fleeting dream from which not even the slightest of sounds can be heard.

Susanne Lund Pangrazio

Only in solitude and silence are we able to fully immerse ourselves. Surrounded by nature, we can climb lower and higher through the valleys of the inner landscapes, unable to tell the difference between the imaginary and the real. The blurred boundaries between memory and fantasy blend in us with their ephemerality. The infinity of the mountains and the inner worlds are parallels that appear in philosophy outside the visual arts. We are guests in the mountains. Lost in time and space. We wander through the landscape and at the same time through the mind. The rocks are a stable constant in contrast to the fragility and transience of human life. They existed and will remain long after we are gone. They sustain life on Earth. Their human conquest and the need to possess them only prove that we are like Lilliputians in the greatness of the world around us. Bringing the monumentality of the mountains into a small gallery space relates to demonstrating a moment of presence where we can fully immerse ourselves in the colors, shapes and sounds. To be absorbed by a dreamscape on the edge of awakening. Wind, birds and melting glaciers are conveyed to us by a site-specific painting installation by Swedish artist Susanne Lund Pangrazio. A certain overlook or under-view allows us to enter the in-between time. Self-identification is often a longing for the absolute on a journey of search and the ability to know the world. All knowledge is subjective and its object is the sensually graspable world. And it is nature that provides us with a transcendental sensibility on the path in search for the absolute. The horizons of being, when the sun sets over us, maybe paraphrase the sun setting over our civilization in the time of climate change.

Lenka Sýkorová

Susanne-Lund-Pangrazio-catalogue

Susanne Lund Pangrazio is a Swedish visual artist who lives and works in the Värmland countryside in the west of Sweden. She holds an MFA from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Scotland (2013) and a BA (Hons) in Global Studies from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden (2010). She has shown work in galleries such as Artbug, Los Angeles; Gallery 70, Albania; Arusha Gallery, Scotland; Lapua Art Museum; Finland and her work can be found in various public and private collections. Her work often ruminates on the transient.

The music piece Brekant by Cheryl E. Leonard accompanies the painting installation. Inspired by sounds from the edges of glaciers, in Brekant field recordings of wind and birds are intertwined with improvisations on granite slabs and glass bottles. Leonard is a San Francisco-based composer, performer, field recordist, and instrument builder whose works investigate natural sites and ecosystems, and human relationships to them.