Jonas Dahlberg

“Stripped and echoing empty rooms pass before the viewer’s eyes in Jonas Dahlberg’s two video installations. With the help of meticulously executed models and small surveillance cameras, the artist creates a fascinating play with the charged spaces of art and film history.”

Translated quote from DN, 2001-03-09, Milou Allerholm. Read full text in Swedish.

“An exhibition that is touching in a strange way is Jonas Dahlberg’s installation in two rooms at Index. It reminds me of a time when I was walking around in an old prison that had been empty for several years. /…/ Dahlberg shows two black and white films. In one, the camera moves down, floor by floor, and records different angles of a vacated apartment. The elevator moves but leads nowhere. The paranoid feeling is the same as in the movie ‘Being John Malkovich’. We watch from the camera’s point of view, as if it was a human being, while simultaneously being trapped in its narrow perspective. Loneliness is man’s mental prison. It is a prison where the person alone handles the disciplinary supervision of themselves. In the second film, the camera moves sideways, we are going through room after room, only to discover that we are back where we started. Being totally alone is like walking in a circle and getting back to your own footprints.”

Translated quote from SvD, 2001-03-17, Anna Brodow. Read full text in Swedish.