JH Engström

Through photography, video, and text, JH Engström constantly juxtaposes oppo- sites to show that vital energy is to be found in all things and that solitude, empathy and a sense of security and of vulnerability are everyday realities. So each portrait or self-portrait, still life or landscape summons up a wealth of memory yielding a poetic visual diary with a universal dimension. His works are testimony to this. Trying to Dance, a seminal work today, sequences the vital rhythm of his travels between Sweden, Paris and New York, and features his friends, self-portraits, the spaces, the mealtimes and simple snatches of life and daily living. This same expressive need is to be found in the more recent Day by Day, in which he chro- nicles his move to Montreuil outside Paris. Drawing on what he sees from his window and the spaces close by, he draws up the por- trait of what has become his new habitat. As he discovers the characters that inhabit that world, he is able to appropriate it.