The Re:Surfaced Art Project began in 2018. It’s called “resurfaced” as my objective was to capture urban artifacts, unique compositions of what is largely unseen and unintentionally created by the public collectively. The images come from a wide range of cities, including Malmö, Kiruna, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Malaga, Porto, Florens, Les Sable-d’Olonne, Tirana, Krakow, Gdansk, Kyiv, Tbilisi, Los Angeles, Danang, and Bangkok. This project concluded in 2023 with the book which is available to order here.

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Each resurfaced artifact captures a portion of a publicly accessible surface that has become so belabored with postings, that each individual message evolves into a fragment with the original communication more or less obliterated. Ultimately, a subsection of such a surface becomes integrated into an abstract composition, and, an enigmatic artifact emerges.

Each composition has four dimensions; length, height, depth – and time. Time? Yes, as the public space where I made the discovery constantly evolves. What initially caught my attention and inspired me will inevitably be influenced by the introduction of new postings but also by weather conditions. Consequentially, over time, new artifacts will be created, which adds an ephemeral dimension to the project.

I am particularly focused on surfaces with multiple layers of printed material, such as public announcements, concerts, theatre, event posters, social and political manifestos, lost and found notes, etc, etc.

To me, these layered, oracular artifacts, collectively created in openly, accessible spaces and surfaces, provide indisputable evidence that our age-old need to communicate and share our thoughts, and ideas, market our goods and services publicly within the urban landscape, continues unapologetically and without regard for our technological advancements and sophisticated communication tools.

For inquiries about exhibiting this project, please contact me: joakim@raboff.com
+46709404919