Eric Lawton

A Forged and Delicate Future highlights five international artists — Gustavo Balbela, Elsa Gregersdotter, Andrej Lamut, Ida Nissen and André Viking — who reconstruct past-and-present-day ephemera in order to navigate the world’s fragile state and propose alternative futures. In this exhibition, contemporary artists frequently combine disjointed text and image fragments against the backdrop of countries and homes infiltrated by rising authoritarian governments, disinformation campaigns, and ecological disasters. By twisting, stretching, and rearranging archival combinations of media, a more precarious and nuanced reality emerges.

A medium of found documentation, the archive can take the form of newspapers, family photo albums and even invasive plant species. Rather than submit to a chaotic and absurdity filled status quo, these artists dive headfirst into the disorder, treating each item they discover as a wholly formed piece of artistic material. Each shard of content can be reconfigured in each artist’s own image as a way to make sense of the world and, ultimately, of themselves. 

While some artists reflect on the external world, others turn inward. Some focus on personal memories, while others question whether the archive can fully encapsulate truth. As family narratives and stories pass down through generations, they often shift and mutate as time progresses. Ultimately, the works reflect an ambiguity of possibility, casting aside notions of absolute truth in favor of liminal realms punctuated by questions without answers.

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Installation Images

Images © Capa Center, Budapest