Optical Illusions

 (Continued from previous two posts.)

Further on along the river, I found this art installation. I was thinking that it was probably a perfect day to view it - the sky so blue, and the water still like a mirror... But on the other hand, I should probably go back in some other kind of weather as well, to see what it looks like then!

Text from the online brochure:

Disrupting Ebb and Flow, 2023
by Elin Stampe (b.1992), Stockholm

A silvery veil spreads reflected
light above the Viskan river and the
Posttorget plaza. Optical illusions
appear on the water, like a flickering
archway that changes with the wind
and movement.

On approaching, you will discover that the
glittering consists of squares of mirror foil on
wires, forming triangles. The history of Viskan is
intimately entwined with Borås; it still character-
ises the city and brings its inhabitants close to
the entire aquatic habitat. To this day, fragments
from the textile mills are found in its vicinity.  

The artist, Elin Stampe, has obvious roots in the realm
of textiles, with its associations to protection,
flexibility and its potential to both enfold and
build volumes. With her monumental installation
Disrupting Ebb and Flow, Stampe connects with
the history of places in a tangible and tender
way. The title also reminds us of another force
– the gravitational pull generated in the mutual
relationship between Earth and the moon. The
eye is bewildered by the flashes of light. 

A version of the work was shown in
a completely different setting in the summer of
2023: Sergels torg plaza in central Stockholm. 

The brochure also mentions the installation being accompanied by "a suggestive sound loop" - but I did not hear that, so the sound must have been off when I was there.

In the background in the photo above is a church tower, which also seems to have some work of art on it. So I went to have a closer look at that, too.

 

 Fiete Stolte (b. 1979) lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Outdoors, works from Stolte’s
photographic series Roots
(2019) are exhibited, which,
at first glance, look like tree
roots. In reality, what we see is
the branches of a leafless tree
top. The title, Roots, leads us to
believe that it is the earthy part
of the tree we are looking at, but when we realise
what it is, we become aware of the tree’s biolog-
ical symmetry. The images are also inverted, like
photo negatives, the historical analogue forerun-
ner of today’s digital photography.

I have so far only seen this one, but perhaps there are more to be found around town.