[April 1st 2002]
Press release

IDA UNSGAARD in New York

Jeg kunne godt lide det hus

Exhibition: APRIL 18 ­ MAY 28, 2002

Sterilemind Gallery
230 Mulberry St, between Prince & Spring
New York, USA
Subway: Take the N/R to Prince or the 6 to Spring
Gallery Phone - 212-941-6767
mike@sterilemind.com
www.sterilemind.com

Photographer Ida Unsgaard's interior landscapes have been featured in group shows at both the Fatamorgana, The Danish School of Art Photography in Copenhagen and, more recently at New York City¹s International Center of Photography where she studied during 2001.

Her new series, and her premiere solo exhibition, Jeg kunne godt lide det hus, (I liked that house) will be hosted at the Sterilemind Gallery from April 18 ­ May 28, 2002.

Unsgaard generally composes at night rambling through dark rooms of her country homes in Denmark and Scotland, stopping to photograph in the midst of flashbacks to childhood experiences, triggered by household details - drapes, wallpapers, textiles, photographs and paintings.

The artist characterizes her work as "emotional landscapes" - images whose texture, subject and composition mediate complicated memories, both disturbing and idyllic; a nostalgia for her childhood moving her to preserve every detail.

Unsgaard uses a medium format plastic camera with an external flash, a spontaneous snapshot approach with simple mechanics to convey a haunted vision.

The inspiration for her intimate photographs comes from a recent series of dramatic events affecting her family, including a fire in South Africa that destroyed her childhood home, Entabeni, in 2000.

Ms. Unsgaard's exhibition is the first showing of her personal collection of interiors from the important places in her life. Beautiful and nostalgic ­ her work reveals the vulnerability of trying to grasp a past that is, nonetheless, slipping away.