PETRA LINDHOLM
Since she began exhibiting internationally a few years ago, Petra Lindholm has been touted as one of Sweden's most promising young artists. With her latest work, Reported Missing, 2003, she lives up to the promise. The ten-minute video is presented as an oversize projection, but a sense of intimacy survives the blowup. Images—of an urban rooftop, a summertime field, a bedroom, a passing airplane—are accompanied by the sound of the artist singing a melancholy love song in a soft, fragile voice. It all runs the risk of being overly sentimental and romantic—and as a matter of fact, it is overly sentimental and romantic. But that, paradoxically, is why it works so well. Lindholm penetrates straight to the heart with a force that would crack even the hardest cynic's blasé exterior. In the end, it's difficult to avoid describing the work with dangerous words like "sublime" and "beautiful."