Ola Rindal

 Ola Rindal. Stains and Ashes

Curated by Luce Lebart.

If I walk in the street, I see houses, cars, trees, people. But in between there are stains, cracks, holes. Sometimes they are like sculptures, sometimes like doors, openings, and sometimes like drawings or paintings. It can be a puddle of water or an oil stain from a car, a crack in the wall, a piece of garbage… these stains have no meaning, no language or narrative. Yet they exist in between all the other elements around us. The project began with a spot on a cloth, an observation. I photographed the spot. Then, I created new spots with ink on paper. Furthermore, I developed the theme with both photos and drawings. After a while, I started incorporating blurred, sometimes nearly abstract portraits. And then also landscapes that could support the arising feeling. It is like the subjects are close to the camera, but there’s a veil in front. The blur and the abstraction are inherent in the nature of photography, just as it is capable of capturing a sharp image. A blurry image has often been seen as a failure, but I use this characteristic to express distance, a sense of not getting closer, not understanding. As if reality escapes. The blurriness settles like a movement, a fog, a disturbance, an unrest, and withholds information about what we see, and appears like memories or subconsciousness.