Gensides de siktbara is a artist’s book of 50 copies with images printed with travertino marble from the city of Rome’s nearby marble industry. In Rome, where the movements of life are squeezed between architectural remains from ancient times, the Etruscan period, the Middle Ages to the externalities of modern times, the visitor steps into a project planned and implemented by the fascist regime of the 1930s. But rather than trying to portray a specific place, a dialogue is initiated here with the city’s now and then.

In previous works, the artist has used the specific materials of places to dissolve the boundaries between the depicted place and its representation. In his previous publication Om han var (2018), he printed portraits of young men on found A4 paper from the urban space. In the exhibition Eftervärld (Konstnärshuset, Stockholm, 2021), a ten-year-long project about a house in Solna was manifested in a large-scale room installation with plywood boards and glass from the house itself.

The starting point for Erik Viklund’s visits to Rome in recent years has been some of the alleys, streets and squares that can be seen in the book Fotografernas Rom 1846-1878 (Thorvaldsens museum, 1978). The book’s photographers seem to have wanted to capture the meeting between the old and the new, the fixed and the ephemeral. Man in the shadow of history and history in the shadow of the world. Because of the time that has passed since they were taken, these old, brown-toned large-format photographs have themselves been turned into relics and therefore approach the very columns they depict. Today, neither the columns nor the photographs appear as the work of individuals, but of an era.

In Rome, Viklund has photographed people living in the shadow of the enormous monuments built by and for residents who have long since died. The portraits have then been embodied in marble, but not as solid sculptures, but as pictures in dusty white powder on black pages. The result is fleeting and fragile, a kind of anti-monument in marble that suggests finitude rather than eternity. Marble is a symbol of power but also of man’s quest for immortality. Perhaps Erik Viklund’s work can be seen as an attempt to undermine that relationship.

All photos taken in Rome, whole book printed with travertine-marble by Erik Viklund.

48 pages, 50 copies released October 2023 by LIHALAIDUN.

Graphic design of cover by Heikki Kaski.

Produced with support of The Swedish Arts Grants Committee/Konstnärsnämnden and Helge Axon Johnson Stiftelse. Printed on Sirio Color Black 140 gsm by FEDRIGONI paper.