OBLIQUE
Oblique uses sports magazines from the 1960s as its source material. The 1960s represents a point of rupture in society, that brought with it sexual revolution, political upheaval and changing gender roles. Now, though, of course, this moment is old; and the bodies, like the ink and paper of the magazines themselves, have degraded.
Partial sections of these magazine images were rephotographed from very close up, in a kind of forensic investigation of the imagery. Details of the photographs are isolated and studied. Markings and annotations, involving circled or numbered areas, hint at correspondences between the images, as though some hidden taxonomic code were being teased out of them. The strategy is evocative not only of police procedure, but also of aerial reconnaissance; it also suggests a state of paranoia , an over-interpretative state of mind that madly taxonomises, with the result that its subject matter multiplies beyond all power of interpretation, as in Antonioni’s Blow Up.
Another aspect of the series tis the way it captures moments of tenderness, perhaps eroticism, a dissolution and confusion of the boundaries of the body. As the gaze moves in closer and closer, the original image is lost, and as small corporeal zones distort they take on new roles and new identities within their new configuration.
"In Oblique (2018) Stenram has clipped photographs of bodies from sports magazines of the 1960s. The period was characterised by revolutionary ideas of emancipation from oppression, from restrictive traditions, from hierarchies, from police violence and from war. Citizens demanded the right to decide over their own bodies, desires and dreams. The body became a battleground and arena for self-realisation, in ways that are now relevant again. Stenram illustrates this by selecting details primarily from martial arts, but crops the images so tightly that we again mistrusts our gaze: are these closely interwound bodies in the throes of a loving or a brutal embrace? Without the full picture, both are possible.
Like several of Stenram’s series, Oblique balances in the space of possibilities between several interpretations. The title Oblique is very apt in its ambivalence: Oblique can be understood as ‘slanting’, ‘hidden’, ‘evasive’, or as something violent: ‘a slash’. Created after Donald J. Trump came into power, the series is more than a comment on the quantitative, goal-oriented and achievement-minded ideas symbolised by sport. It also addresses the glorification of the individual, the misogynous and national-romantic demagogy of the 45th US president, and the shocks that his careless attitude to established truths sent through the normal world order. Linking the past and the present, Stenram questions power and power structures. And with the increasingly restrictive tendencies of contemporary realpolitik one glimpses spectres from the past that come back to destabilise our world-view. We see past and present fuse. "
Laura Ifversen on Oblique (extract from her essay Between Dreams and New Reality / About Eva Stenram:Cadastral), 2022.
Oblique was fist exhibited at Galerie aKonzept in Berlin (DE) in 2018. The exhibition was curated by novelist Thierry Decottignies.
Oblique was also exhibited by Ravestijn Gallery at the Unseen Festival 2018, Amsterdam (NL).
Watch the Unseen 4-minute video:
Oblique installed in the exhibition Cadastral at Fotografisk Center, Copenhagen (DK), 2022.
Oblique installed at Galerie aKonzept, Berlin (DE), 2018.
Oblique installed at Unseen Festival, Amsterdam (NL), courtesy of The Ravestijn Gallery, 2018
Oblique - Limited Edition Box Set
The box set consists of a plexiglas slipcase containing a leporello with reproductions of all photographs from the 2018 Oblique Exhibition, as well as an original photograph.
Leporello: risograph, 12 pages, 29,7 x 21 cm. 29,7 x 252 cm.
Photograph: pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag, 29,7 x 21 cm, signed and numbered, unique prints.
Edition of 22 + 5 AP.
available through Galerie aKonzept