Gallery: Simen Johan's 'Until the Kingdom Comes' opens at Fotografiska

Friday marked the opening of Simen Johan's photography exhibition at the Fotografiska museum of contemporary photography, art and culture, with the author present to give a tour of the works. Wang Chen's video installation "Fractured Delights" also opened.
In the photo series "Until the Kingdom Comes," Johan combines paradisiacal natural views with reality, attempting to deceive the viewer by raising the question of what in the picture is real and what is not. All elements in Johan's works are photographed by him, using only natural light. Johan mentions that he is not interested in art created by artificial intelligence until it can convey the experience of being a computer, and experience is what Simen Johan's works largely speak of.
Simen Johan, a Scandinavian-origin photo artist, filmmaker and sculptor residing in New York, gained wider recognition in the early 1990s as one of the first photographers to experiment with digital editing while simultaneously combining it with various techniques of traditional photography.
The works exhibited contain elements of nature photographed in very diverse locations around the world: in zoos as well as in wild natural spots, on lava fields and in deserts. This is not classic nature photography but an artist who creates different meanings, whose cohesive composition arises from the combination of natural elements and digital manipulation.

"Simen Johan is an uncompromising photo artist with very strong technical skills and knowledge, and at the same time, he wants the viewer to interpret the work based on their own experience and perspective. He does not want to provide clear and definitive answers about his works but rather challenges the viewer to discover what is hidden within them," stated Maarja Loorents, co-founder and director of exhibitions at Fotografiska.
Alongside Simen Johan, Fotografiska presents Wang Chen's captivatingly colorful work "Fragmented Delights," where traditional manual skills meet the rich possibilities of digital technology, juxtaposing ancient, inherent roots with today's culture and life. The Chinese-origin artist reimagines landscapes in his video installation, related to the complex experiences nesting in the background of migrants' changing self-definitions.
"Wang Chen is a young and strongly conceptual artist. We aim to showcase in our exhibition program artists whose creative peak is not yet reached but is gaining momentum, making Wang Chen a prime example," Loorents explained the background of the new exhibition.
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Editor: Neit-Eerik Nestor, Marcus Turovski