«Light Play» by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy at Fotografiska Stockholm
February 4 - May 7, 2023
A solo exhibition ‘Light Play’ by László Moholy-Nagy will be presented at Fotografiska Stockholm from February 4 till May 7. This is a second iteration of the exhibition after its debut in Fotografiska New York in 2022.
From formal experimentation to personal documentation, the 68 works (created between 1922 and 1945) in the show (including photography, photograms, photomontage, and moving image) collectively illuminate a novel side of an artist whose institutional spotlight has historically centered on painting, sculpture, and design.
“Primarily known as a painter, we want to shed new light on Moholy-Nagy as an image-making pioneer in his use of the camera as a new instrument of vision,” said Jessica Jarl, Director of Global Exhibitions at Fotografiska. “With an interest in modern technology and change, Moholy-Nagy experimented with photography, darkroom processes, and editing. The way he captured lines, shapes, and light broke new ground in the early twentieth century.”
Untitled Photogram Hands 1925-1926 / © Estate of the Laszlo-Moholy-Nagy a Artists Rights Societ
The exhibition offers some of his earliest experiments with photomontage or “photoplastics” as he called them, and with photograms revealing body parts like hands, and the artist’s own profile. Geometric forms often appear in Moholy-Nagy’s works, especially the circle. For example, in the photoplastic Olly and Dolly Sisters, 1925, and the film poster Mord auf den Schienen (Murder on the Rails), 1925, the dominant form is a circle.
‘Light Play’ focuses on Moholy-Nagy as a photographer, revealing an artist with an interest in modern technology and change. One of the videos presented in the exhibition, Ein Lichtspiel schwarz weiss grau (A Lightplay black white gray) depicts how the sculpture ‘Light Prop for an Electric Stage’ (1930) generated abstract light and shadow formations. Moholy-Nagy described the effects generated by the sculpture as a “moving painting”.
Light was a career-long preoccupation of Moholy-Nagy, who in 1944 reflected that his aim was to “paint with light.” With the photogram—wherein objects are “painted” on light-sensitive paper by a light source and the casting of shadows— Moholy-Nagy created photographic images without a camera, through pure manipulation of light and shadow.
Title image: László Moholy-Nagy, Light Play, Fotografiska New York, installation view, 2022
