Villads Keiding, Designer
Catalogue text written in relation to ART COPENHAGEN, The Nordic Art Fair 2011

When looking at things closely, Lotte Agger is continuously puzzled by their real nature: "The objects that capture me are often on the edge of nothing, in the act of dissolving. Take for instance the picture of the grey car, photographed from the side so that it looks almost completely flat. A Mercedes, once an icon of prosperity, but now lost from the world. It is just there, broken and left behind, bleeding gasoline and it consists of nothing else but thin and lopsided rusting sheets. We attach so many dreams and ideas to the things around us. I still remember the first time I realized that everything in Bakken is made of cardboard. - That it is not at all what it pretends to be!"

The art works are built of objects and simple scenarios, carved loose from their context and placed on the edge of a world consisting of sky and earth. Only the unique is preserved. The pictures show traces of humans who were once there, but have now left. When Lotte Agger takes photos of old mobile homes, dreary residential areas, deserted parking lots and abandoned toys, she is also pointing to the things we overlook, to the wonders of the seemingly boring, to the magic of daily life. "To me it is about creating a concentration of a feeling or atmosphere, in this case of desertion. It is about finding the object that creates exactly this ambiance, and cut everything else away" says Lotte Agger.

And this is what she does through extensive photo manipulation. Just about as long as the camera has been known, photos have been subject to manipulation, and digital photo processing has opened new possibilities. Lotte Agger does in no way try to hide what she has actually done with the photos. Her intention is to make the adaptation obvious, turn it into a visual element and a form of expression per se; "...explicit like the stroke of a brush" Lotte Agger says.

The finished works are typically characterized by a great simplicity of the composition. The simplicity is a result of a long process. Accordingly, there are many capsized attempts behind every single work, attempts that have resulted in breaking the picture, as Lotte Agger puts it, and therefore subject to complete recreation or simple rejection.

The photo works of Lotte Agger are simultaneously intriguing and challenging, investigative and worth investigating. The works are a magic mirror. She intends to show us the things we think we see in our daily life and yet do not see after all. A reality we think we know and have sensed for a brief moment when we happened to be close by. The existential references are clear: The rocking horse has been dug up and put away on a field. The cottage tent is used as a lumber room and is full of old junk. Everything is perishable, our dreams too.