Displaced memories.
Alex Mulder Is a Dutch/Kiwi artist based in London. He seeks to capture and record the lines and colours of global urban environments.
He began to learn his craft in New Zealand. There the environment was open, the light relentless, with shapes and lines overly saturated. In contrast, London’s light seemed sharper but more selective, leading Mulder on a search to capture the city’s momentary light. On the premise that things explain each other, not themselves, Mulder set out on a comparative study of city landscapes and urban freespaces which continues to this day. This book captures the first 10 years of this project.
What all Mulder’s works share in common is the attempt to document environments and people going about their day-to-day life. But how can you slow down the colossal energy of a city and its thousands, even millions of inhabitants? How can you capture light as it moves through the thick urban landscape? Mulder attempts to do so by slowing down time and abstracting it. The lines and colours that are captured are ordinary moments that would have only existed once. The images are his way to remember how places felt and how the light looked, in order to re-live the memories in the future and as way to mark his travels.
Mulder has displayed his works in Auckland and London.