SCHOLARSHIP WINNER 2023
Josef Alexanderson draws using a camera and LEDs. In pitch-black nature, he freezes a series of graphically dramatic moments, where limitations and chance control the artistic outcome. But even if he loads his hands with technology, it is its physical presence and the flow of thought that create the quality of the works here.

"A camera on a tripod with a shutter speed of 30 seconds and an LED in my hand have been the basic requirements for the kind of drawing I’m exploring. The results are spatial drawings whose limitations consist of time and physical reach – I can only stretch so high, I only have time to get so far away before the 30 seconds have passed. Instead of portraying an object that manifests itself as an emblem within the space (which is how I started), I was drawn towards a choreography dictated by the conditions of the location.

Three-dimensional drawings take shape in a process of trial-and-error, where a number of more and less successful images lead me towards a composition that is negotiated between the movements of the arm and assessments of previous images. My movements on and through specific places – glades, streams and waterfalls – create light trails in the forest and on the land, which are presented as photographs."