Paints 2
Anders Edström
May 15 - June 15, 2024
Documentation by Anders Edström
Anders Edström is a visual artist based in Stockholm, Sweden, taking photographs and
making films. For Edström’s first solo presentation with Antics, the artist presents a suite of
photographic studies depicting pools of paint on smooth surfaces.
There’s a small hill next to a golf course that allows for one to be undisturbed. The golfers
don’t touch the equipment and the set-up can be left there for days. Edström awaits a day
with the right light and weather conditions and gets to work. He sets up one or more tables,
preferably close to the ground in order to take pictures from all angles, high and low. On
each table he puts a white foam board. It must be perfectly levelled. The foam boards are
marked with a date and a number. Edström photographs the foam board with the bucket
of paint that is soon to be used on top of it. This connects place, date, paint and results in
preparation for a future systematic selection process, as this is an accumulative endeavour.
Edström pours paint onto the foam boards. The act demands both focus and a certain
tolerance for gravity’s workings, the paint’s viscosity and especially wind-related accidents,
though these can be circumvented by creating a windshield from a wooden plank. One pour
per table is enough. The shapes become very similar. The shapes also become very different.
Some pools are better than others. Desirable is a centred, neat circle with an approximate
diameter of ten centimetres but no matter the outcome the pools must be photographed.
Black oil-based lacquer has proven to give the most favourable results with properties
similar to a mirror. Other colours, paints and lacquers can also give satisfying results.
Everything is reflected in the pools. Clouds. Trees. Edström photographs the pools of paint
with a Nikon FM3A. Sometimes the paint matures beautifully over three days or so upon
which more photographs can be taken. Sometimes the rain has completely destroyed it.