text by curator Lena Essling

Throughout this autumn Oscar Furbacken’s video piece “Close Studies of Rome” (2017) is on view at the Mini Cinema of Moderna Museet. The work is just one of a total of 373 new acquisitions that constitute the museum’s extensive project “Swedish Acquisitions 2021.”

Through sculpture, video films and installations Oscar Furbacken (born 1980) frequently focuses on issues relating to the uncertainty of humankind’s fragile relation to the world around us. Which habitats will remain, and which will be lost? What are the criteria on which a civilisation depends?

In “Close Studies of Rome” (7:23 min, loop) Furbacken immerses the viewer in the world of Classical Rome’s sculptures and stonework, which is populated by primordial species of lichen, mosses and chasmophytes. Here, in the cracks between nature and culture, in the gaps between now and then, Furbacken’s probing and all-seeing camera reveals the indomitable resilience and energy of life.

The video is the third film in the artist’s ongoing project “Urban Microhabitats”, which investigates scale, perception and the effects of time in the micro-landscapes that surround us.

/Lena Essling, 2022

Curator at Moderna Museet Stockholm

Click below for more info and images from the project