Oscillating between real and surreal, fighting with loneliness and longing for deeper human connection. Moments of epiphany get rarer and searching for them becomes an obsession, that rush of happiness and satisfaction that floods the brain for a moment is addictive and becomes another emotional longing. The constant remnants of unpleasant personality traits from the past, those that you thought had disappeared with maturity. Up and down, up and down like a rollercoaster seeming to move forward towards the void of a future but feeling caught in an unbreakable repetitive loop.
Josef Kovac (*1982, former Czechoslovakia) studied photography in Dublin, Ireland and he also holds an MFA in Photography from HDK-Valand Academy, Gothenburg, Sweden. Where he currently lives and works. His book was shortlisted for the Kassel Dummy Award 2020 and in 2023, he was awarded a two-year scholarship by the Swedish Art Council.
Kovac is particularly interested in challenging the relationship between the photographic image and fiction, and the perception of this relationship by taking seemingly ordinary objects or spaces and transferring them into new fictive narratives and contexts.