2025
Sunlight on mass-market book pages, laser-etching on acrylic glass
24,5 x 35 cm (with frame) each

2025
Essay named A Short Story About The Oval Portrait
16 pages
125 x 195 mm

The Oval Portrait – A Short Story is a visual paraphrase of the short story named The Oval Portrait (1845) by American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). In the short story, an artist paints a portrait of his wife with such passion that he does not notice the fading of the living model as the painting becomes more and more life-like. The short story ends with the artist exclaiming, ‘This is like Life itself!’ –  his wife falling dead to the ground at the same time. In the piece, the ovals are exposed on old, blank mass-market book pages by using sunlight. Due to the acidity of the paper, sunlight yellows the paper and eventually decays it – a process which information science calls “slow fire”.  Because of this process, the exposed ovals will disappear over time despite the framing. Only a laser-etching on the glass remains, creating a shadow of a date. The date marks the period of time each page has been exposed to the sunlight and implicates that something was here, even when the pages have turned blank once again. Taking the original short story of Poe’s as a point of departure, the piece arouses a question: Is the art work destroyed or replenished when it disappears?

The essay named A Short Story About The Oval Portrait accompanies the series.