MARIA NEVELSON Paris-Basel 1973-1974Aufnahme (n) Photographien10 - 22.03.1978

The next exhibition at Galerie S:t Petri in Lund deals with how human beings optically register reality as it changes in time and space. “Maria Nevelson, Paris–Basel 1973–1974” depicts a train journey between these two cities, and the intention is to give a visual description of how we can “read” the landscape as the train rushes forward.

Ordinarily, we perceive the “classical” landscape “in depth,” from a stationary viewpoint. Our perception then takes place through a (perspectival) “penetrating” and “discontinuous” point of view. However, if we start instead from a moving point of fixation, we “read” the landscape as “linear,” “fluid,” and “continuous.”

To capture these shifting points of view, a journey was made on a fast-moving train. A camera, focused at infinity and placed in front of a window, recorded—without any particular intervention from the operator—the image of the landscape as the camera saw it. This journey was repeated several times over the course of the four seasons.

Some of the results of this experiment show that the more successively one fixes points in reality—that is, travels “linearly”—the blurrier and less precise the image becomes. In terms of distance perception, what is farthest away appears the least blurred. A parallel might be drawn to human memory: we remember best and most clearly what lies furthest back in time.

In the exhibition, which ends on March 22, 1978, several of the images recorded by the camera during the journey are presented. Galerie S:t Petri has organized the exhibition in collaboration with the Modern Art Agency in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, and the magazine Apeiros.

Opening hours: weekdays 15:00–20:00, Saturdays and Sundays 13:00–17:00.