Author Description

"To look deeply at the work of Swedish-Russian artist Nathalia Edenmont is to see beyond the intrinsic beauty of the images. The process to create her large-scale photographs is complex and dependent on a team of assistants to carefully build each garment under the artist's exact instruction. Each shot can take up to eighteen hours to create one photograph, using a large format Sinar camera and a multitude of lenses. The artist recognizes that her work and life are intertwined and that she is compelled to create from this perspective. At first glance, much of her work is full of wistful young women wearing ball gowns of spectacularly vibrant flowers and fruit. However, art is not always about what is readily seen, but more often about what lies beneath. If the bounty of nature serve as the metaphor of life in these images, a closer look at the covert and delicate details reveals a compulsion to wrestle with the nature of loss and death. In her works, death and life, pain and beauty are presented as flip sides of the same coin. The exhibition's broad chronological collection of Edenmont's career becomes an intimate window into an artist's soul, a roadmap of loss, and a testament to the resilience and courage of the artist." --Amy Pleasant, from text.