Adam Jeppesen heads for the sublime white

Two years ago, Adam Jeppesen exhibited his “Flatlands Camp Project” at Galerie van der Mieden. To complete the project, the Danish photographer travelled from the North Pole to Antarctica in absolute solitude. It was an uninterrupted, 487-day journey during which he crossed both the Americas. Along the way, he took photos of the rough and desolate landscapes. To him, these photos signified a kind of guarantee of a certain present, a conscious moment during a solitary trip on which concepts like time and space inevitably took on new meanings. For the exhibition, the images were cut into pieces, printed on a photocopier, and then rearranged in wooden frames using different pinned sheets: the reconstruction of a photographic image as a metaphor for the reconstruction of a memory. The enigmatic representation of a distorted reality, as it was (re-)experienced by the lonely traveller.

In his new exhibition, Jeppesen experiments further with this idea. “X” is based on three photos of landscapes that are as atmospheric as they are desolate. Except for the date on which they were taken – only the day and the month, not the year –, there is no other context in which to place them. A series of photogravures of each image hangs on the wall, prints made using a very old technique whereby a photo is first affixed to a copper plate before being printed. But instead of reproducing a set number of perfect prints, Jeppesen thought it would be more interesting only to ink the plate once and then to see how many he could print before the image disappeared completely. The concept is simple but effective. Each subsequent print is slightly paler. And as always happens with fading images, both on paper and in your head, you tenaciously try to grasp hold of reference points – the points that endure longest on the paper and start forming the framework for the whole image. But eventually, these are lost irrevocably. What remains is the sublime white, the ultimate void.

ADAM JEPPESEN: X > 27/6, wo/me/We > za/sa/Sa 13 > 18.00, Galerie Van der Mieden, rue Antoine Dansaertstraat 196, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-513.62.12, www.vandermieden.com