Dorothée Nilsson Gallery presents works by Gerry Johansson and Dawid, bringing together two key figures in contemporary photography from Sweden. In the dialogue between the two artists, concerns such as space, society, and structure intersect with perception, time, and disruption - Johansson representing an analytical, distanced approach, and Dawid a phenomenological, more introspective one. While Johansson asks how the world is structured, Dawid focuses on how perception comes into being. Johansson reduces the world in his images in order to see it more clearly; by contrast, Dawid works with abstraction to reveal how uncertain our “seeing” is. Both artists share a long-standing conceptual practice, the use of reduction as a formal strategy, and a commitment to working in series.
For the first time, works from the series ANTARKTIS (2001), photographed in large format, are now on view in Berlin. In these black-and-white photographs, Johansson presents a contemplative world of amorphous, sculptural forms, largely untouched by human hands and destined to disappear as a result of climate change. Nature here appears as something sublime, not merely a resource. The juxtaposition with a number of images from the series TOKYO (2004) makes clear how his works can be read: not as places in the conventional sense, but as recurring constellations of light, pattern, form, and structure. Dawid presents photographs from the series BUR (2009), OAS (2018), and ROD (2024). Here, the artist transforms the object into an open visual form. Photographed things lose their functional clarity and become open to reinterpretation by the viewer. Meaning emerges as a tentative process of recognition, shaped through the interplay of seeing and reflection. This is also evident in photographs from the series BUR (cage): automobiles stand covered in garages, devoid of daylight behind bars. Here, a material object charged with desire is protected from decay and intrusion. In Dawid’s photographs, a formal construct emerges on the aesthetic level—a sculptural installation in which clarity and intention dissolve. - Barbara Esch Marowski
Gerry Johansson (*1945 in Örebro, lives in Höganäs) is considered one of the central Swedish figures of a conceptual, analytical photography that understands the medium as an instrument of thought. Since the 1980s, he has consistently pursued an artistic approach aimed at making the structures of the world visible through systematic observation. His works are developed in series and are often geographically defined. Dawid (Björn Dawidsson, *1949 in Örebro, lives in Stockholm) is regarded as a formative representative of postmodern, conceptually expanded photography in Sweden. Early on, he developed an independent artistic stance that treats photography not as a depiction of reality, but as a medium for reflecting on perception, materiality, and the conditions of the image itself.