Tova Rudin Lundell

You Call This Work

Exhibition at Slakthusateljéerna, September 2023.

Since 2020 I have been working in the area of Slakthusområdet, where I also have my studio, an area subject to a massive urban transformation. My work can be read as an intimate study of the ongoing changes in the area, executed in a scale close to the human body.

Part of this ongoing work was presented through the exhibition “Body was here”, 2021, at Slakthusateljéerna. This new exhibition, “You call this work”, can be read as a second chapter.

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Only the surface remains. All interiors have been eliminated. We are in a waiting room, vast as a neighborhood. What was once a landscape of production is to become a landscape of consumption. Now, the demolition consultant presides over the site.

No traces have been left behind. The artist has wiped away the plaster stains from the molding process. Afterwards, it's impossible to discern what has been taken to the archive. The body, the hands, and simple tools shape the impression. A chair; found. A trash bin; accessible. Street archivism. It would have been easy to take a trophy, pry off a metal sheet, transfer a piece of material to another room, but the impression is of a different order.

The place is the narrative, and the body is the narrator. The cast is an object in its own right, created in equal parts by the muted house and the storytelling body. The photograph is an image, generated by the room's blind light and the seeing eye. The drawing is a representation, tasked with portraying, preceding as well as succeeding the space.

The matte smoothness of the corrugated facade sheet, with irregular folds and dents, has been translated into a thin layer of plaster. The hands transform the facade into something soft, almost merging with the building before the delicate shell is detached. The narrative is carried forward through the two sides of the impression: the surface that has been in direct contact with the building, and the side that the artist has worked on to create the cast. The narrative has two sides. Only the surface sets them apart.

Accompanying text by Malin Zimm

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