Mikael Olsson: on | auf [signed]

Architecture, creation and re-creation: An exploration of identity and history seen through the temporary pavilion at Serpentine Gallery (2012) by Herzog & De Meuron and Ai Weiwei.

"The images of Mikael Olsson are held by the tension between visual faculties and visual conventions, the reality of perception and the reality of vision, of the concrete and the abstract." Péter Nádas 

The publication, on | auf by the Swedish artist Mikael Olsson, undertakes a photographic study of the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron’s and the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s temporary pavilion at the Serpentine Gallery in London 2012.

The investigation of the pavilion through the manifestiation of different forms and interpretations seeks to expand the space between the physical and the imaginary, it is this liminal space that intrigues Olsson. He reconceptualizes the pavilion as both a material and conceptual point of departure. To expand this process he investigated the traces of Herzog & de Meuron’s and Ai Weiwei’s creative processes through exploring their archives. On visiting Ai Weiwei [when under house arrest 2013], he was given access to the Skype conversations between the artist and Herzog & de Meuron. Olsson recorded these conversations on analogue film, picking up the fingerprints, breath marks on the monitor screen of Weiwei.

The book includes an essay by the Hungarian writer and photographer Péter Nádas entitled ’Loaned Landscapes, Borrowed Objects. The Real Space of the Image and the Representation of Space in Mikael Olsson’s Photography.’ Here, Nádas situates Olsson’s tactics, in which he moves away from conventional relationships of architecture to place, and instead thrives to capture that between the perception of the object and the object itself. Architectural documentation does not interest him, as Nádas says, “He leaves memesis to the architects…while borrowing the building or the architectural object, creates an autonomous space with his photographs”.

Olsson creates images that go beyond the pavilion as object, creating visual narratives which uncover issues of memory, perception and liminal spaces. In describing his work Olsson sums up his approach to capturing what lies between the object and its reading, “on | auf refers to the transformative power of photography, and its articulation of perception, displacement, and liminal spaces.”

--- Swedish:
I hans fotografier utforskas återskapandet av historien och historiens närvaro i nuet.
Undersökningsobjektet i boken on | auf är Serpentine Paviljong 2012 av Herzog & de Meuron och konstnären Ai Weiwei, som förvandlas och skiftar identitet i en process präglad av politiska perspektiv och frågor. Olsson följer objektet från idéstadiet via immateriella och materiella spår i arkitekternas och konstnärens arkiv till dess tillfälliga placering i London och vidare till en privat egendom. Boken har en essä av den ungerske författaren Peter Nadas.