Proces and Photography
December 2022
LOKALE - Griffenfeltsgade 27, Copenhagen

No Things
Overrun branches, a piece of string, pebbles, shards of glass from a smashed bus stop shed, a dead and dried out seagull, used baking paper and a burnt beer can from Amager Common – seemingly worthless materials that have been selected precisely because they no longer fit into existing chains of value. Through the staging of the materials in photographic tableaus, they are given a new existence and meaning of their own. Things are grasped in their transformations from something to something else. In her aesthetic studies, Jeanette Land Schou re-animates found objects and natural materials. Through lighting and colouring, wonderful and complex spaces and universes are created, where the overlooked and wasted get a voice and form new stories. The photographs in the exhibition are a series of free associations that are based on an inner unrest and point to the border between horror, concern and aesthetic fascination.

In the exhibition “No Things”, the audience is invited into the artistic process. Schou installs her workspace in Lokale, where the photo studio and work table become part of the exhibition. During the exhibition, she will produce a series of new photographs as a further development of the exhibited works. Here you can follow her work with the construction of the tableaus and the light, and the audience is invited to observe, participate and add objects and ideas to the setups during the process.

As an insight into her working processes, Schou also show a selection of the materials and images that she has compiled during her visual and aesthetic investigations; images from the internet of oxygen-poor seabeds, coral structures, algae, primordial soups, funghi, mold and viruses, starry sky, an atlas of the nervous system, tree roots, branches and networks. The collection also show examples of other artists' works that has inspired her in her own practice.

Jeanette Land Schou (b. 1958) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Characteristic of her photographic practice is an interest in the outskirts of the city, its vague terrain, but also in the meaning of things in a still life. Here you can see inspiration from both the European tradition and Japanese Ikebana. Schou's aesthetic images insist on a presence that opens the viewer's eyes to the overlooked. Schou seeks the spectacular in the inconspicuous, the exotic in the things close by. With her photos, she direct the viewers’ attention to the unnoticed by showing it in a new light, and point out that an overrun branch can hide beauty otherwise overlooked.

LOKALE is an artist-run exhibition space, and for the artists involved, the process is as important as the result. The collective behind LOKALE consists of visual artists, performers, social practitioners and mediators. What links them together is an interest in the collaborative work field, both internally and externally – as a premise for artistic practice and as a meaningful strategy in interaction with the public and the individual.

Thanks to
The Danish Art Counsil
LOKALE v. Cai-Ulrich von Platen
Mediaverkstaden in Malmö, Sweden
Foreningen Multimedial #11