All artists relate to previous works of art and other artists in one way or another. There are of course a lot of references to choose from, maybe too many? Deciding on a specific work and pointing on an individual artist can therefore be difficult. In some cases, the relationship to the source can also feel private and something you want to keep to yourself. The participating artists have chosen different paths and share their personal experiences in the exhibition.
The idea of the exhibition was, in addition to highlight an important part of the artistic process, to show that the art made today could not have been made without the history on which it rests. In some ways, all art that was ever made exist side by side with what is done today. When we experience a new work of art, it is placed in front of a motley background of voices from history.
Art often strives for the innovative and unique, for something that looks or sounds like nothing we have experienced before. Maybe we can instead see the contemporary as a new chapter in a book that is never finished? Where each new line relates to the previous one and is part of a larger story.
I carry inside myself my earlier faces, as a tree contains its rings. The sum of them is me. The mirror sees only my latest face, while I know all my previous ones.
– Tomas Tranströmer
