edition 1:

"Don't Be Afraid of the Dark"

A new artistic experiment has come to Arvika. We want to take art out onto the streets so that it becomes accessible to everyone! We invite artists to use the darkness as material and make art visible to a larger audience during the darkest time of the year. So, don't be afraid of the dark!

"Passage"

Irene Suosalo
Finland
Västra Torggatan

Irene Suosalo is a video artist and VJ (Visual Jockey) in the Helsinki club scene. Her artistic practice intuitively experiments with old and new animation methods, both analogue and digital. During this process, a scanned image goes through a variety of animation phases. She plays with different interventions to shape the original composition into something surprising. "Passage" visualizes the development of ten fictional landscapes, inspired by old children's animations from Russia and the Czech Republic, and Walt Disney.

The immersive landscape she created for the old Snövit (Snow White) clothing store moves along with the viewer, appearing and disappearing as the viewer passes, by car or on foot.

www.irenesuosalo.com

"Skuggspel med Konversationsfigurer"

Ekstedt/Andersson
Sweden

Ekstedt/Andersson tests both ideas and objects. "We have grand ideas. We add and subtract. Relate to contemporary discussion reservedly. Sometimes bombastic, sometimes a bit modestly moving. Take up the whole room and listen for everything. The poetic emerges by chance when chaos takes shape, when sound and image fill both head and body to the brim. One gets warm from the feeling of seeing something. Not the truth, but the warmth, everything is complex. everything is empty. Start over, we test ideas and objects. The magnificent lurks in the reeds."

"Stadens Hjärta"

Lin de Mol
The Netherlands/Sweden
Hamngatan 11

For Arvika Light! 2020, Lin de Mol projects one of her drawings onto the back of a building bordering a parking lot. A dark corner of the city becomes a drive-in cinema for a 9-meter high still image: The City's Heart.

"Drawing for me is a way to carefully observe and get to know a thing or an object. To understand it and never forget it. When it comes to the heart: I think it's a good idea to never forget your heart; where it is placed, its size, and what it does. Especially in these times.

I build up a drawing with infinitely fine lines until form and volume appear: it's like a meditation. Most of my drawings no longer exist. They were drawn with Bic pens, with ink that cannot withstand light. It is interesting to think that what destroyed this drawing is exactly what gives it life now.”

www.lindemol.com

"the Other, the Self"

översatt: den Andre, den Samme

Tina Nykvist
Sweden

Tina Nykvist's work comes from a project entitled "The Other, the Same," which refers to icon painting. "It is said that you should look at an icon long enough so that the roles have time to switch. It is not you looking at the icon, the icon is looking at you. I have chosen animals instead of people to avoid meeting, for example, a man with round glasses and a flowered shirt in the mirror. An animal becomes more neutral, general, universally human. It becomes a meeting that does not stop at the objectification of the other.”

"To see the spirit, one must bend down, and the spirit's feet perspective becomes the same as yours through the mirror. You merge into the same event through your bodies in the same room.”

www.tinanykvist.se

"Many Mirrors Mirroring Multiple Memories"

Oona Libens
Belgium
Kyrkogatan

In "Many Mirrors Mirroring Multiple Memories," fragments of an image are reflected like shards of memories, elusive as dreams. The image is projected onto several mirror fragments and glass plates hanging from the ceiling on threads, which then reflect it back onto the wall.

"In this work, I have chosen to project 'The Peasant Wedding' from 1568, a painting by the Flemish painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder. He often painted popular motifs, poor farmers at work and in misery, but also in happier feast scenes like here. His paintings remind us that one must enjoy life despite harsh times—something we may have to try to embrace today?"

Oona Liebens works extensively on breaking up the rectangular 'screen experience' that is so present in our lives today. By breaking up the image into fragments and projecting them onto different surfaces, she wants to create a more spatial slideshow.

www.oonalibens.com

"The Gathering"

Jenny Soep
Scotland
Kolonin, Kyrkogatan 42

The artist Jenny Soep uses drawing as a way to explore the connection between the observer and who or what is being observed, often simultaneously.

For Arvika Light! she has drawn a "gathering"—a collection of drawings inspired by other festival artworks and artists, installed at nearby locations. Her work is part treasure map, part visual diary, drawn and projected, directly onto Kolonin's Window Gallery.

Instagram: @jennysoep
Facebook: JennySoepDrawingTheExperience
www.jennysoep.com