Consumed notions

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, following the government guidance, ifa gallery was closed a few days after the opening of the exhibition on 14 March, and re-opened on 14 May.
Consequently, we decided to extend ‘Consumed Notions’ until 11 July.

ifa gallery is proud to present ‘Consumed Notions’, a new unseen series of artworks by Joakim Eneroth, for a second solo exhibition at the gallery in Brussels.

This series of photographs and sculptures touches on our subconscious identification with well-known brands and how they are presented to us. Many products we buy have similar content but with a unique presentation that entices us to consume.

In this photographic series, the artist Joakim Eneroth has taken different famous brands and poured them into plastic boxes, placed them on light tables and photographed them from above. When separated from the concepts, logos and designs, the perception of the products becomes something completely different.
In this art project, Eneroth has been exploring the transformation of dense products associated with consumerism and here investigated their ethereal and transparent nature in its temporary expression. It is an exploration of how the sublime and etheric aspect of reality is an underlying potential in all form, as well as in the formless. When the boundaries of the material world are dissolved, we enter the landscape of neither subject nor object, the transparent interrelationship between the relative and the absolute. The artwork exposes and expands our definitions and associations with products of everyday life.

In another part of the art project the etheric and colourful have taken the concrete form of sculptures depicting over flowing and dripping consumer products and their packaging. The sculptures relates to how our human consuming behaviour slowly is melting down the ecological ground that we stand on and are dependent of.
We are again taken into the more transcendental aspect in the abstract globe. The spheres have been painted with paint and pigment that have been mixed with the consumed product itself, for example Colgate toothpaste mixed with colour pigments and paint. The globes patterns are abstract but are done in reference to the colour scale of the packaging and logotype of the product. As the title suggests, ‘Consumed Absorption’, the sculptures might give a taste of absorption, the mental state  that we easily get addicted to fulfil one more desire of acquiring what we want.

Joakim Eneroth is an international established Swedish artist who is represented with his art work in large museum collections such as: Tate Modern (London), Brooklyn Museum of Art (New York), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Houston Museum of fine art, Dallas Museum of art, MEP (Paris), Frank Suss Collection (London), Deichtorhallen – House of photography (Hamburg), Musée des Beaux Arts (Pau), Art Foundation Mallorca, Bowery Collection (Copenhagen), Nordiska Museet (Stockholm), Montana Collection (Copenhagen).

The aim of Joakim Eneroth´s art work is often to reveal more and more of the subconscious layers of our experience, the dance of notions and perceptions in the fluctuating mind. The questions usually revolve around how to distinguish the mental projections from reality itself. Awareness and mind are the themes that unite Eneroth’s protean work. With each new series, the artist explores another aspect of consciousness and the boundaries where our inner and outer worlds meet. His work has been exhibited internationally in dozens of solo and group shows and have been published as art books with prestigious publishers like Steidl and Power House Books. He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards.