|
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
THE FARAWAY NEARBY: MULTIMEDIA SHOW FROM FINLAND March 30 - April 22, 2006 Artists: Miklos Gaal / Ilkka Halso / Aino Kannisto / @ (VIDEOBOX), a division of WHITE BOX MARIA DUNCKER, BRANCHES 2004, 2:05 min MINNA SUONIEMI, MONSTER 2004, 1:24 min ANITTI LAITINEN, SNOWMAN 2005, 6:56 min Curated by Irmeli Kokko
The Faraway Nearby showcases thirteen contemporary
artists from Finland with works ranging from photography,
video, and installations to street-action/performances.
Part of a curatorial initiative inaugurated in 2004 and
intended as a trilogy, the project focuses on Finland's
engagement with contemporary art practices and the
critical contributions Finland's artists bring to the advance
of art discourse in Northern Europe and around the world.
Building on its mission to provide a dynamic venue for
innovative and challenging artists from the US and
around the world, WHITE BOX has presented several
ongoing exhibition programs that engage cultural
contexts and artists who have had little or no exposure in
New York. For the first installment in 2004, titled Finnish
Tango, curator Victor Zamudio-Taylor examined the
nature of art produced by artists living and working in
Finland today. In 2005, Raul Zamudio curated Under
Your Skin with works that referenced the nature of
Finnish art produced by artists in Finland and abroad.
Curated by Carla Stellweg, The Faraway Nearby
completes this expansive project by addressing the
position of cultural "outsider," acknowledging cultural
difference while collaborating with Irmeli Kokko, a native
Finnish curator and "insider" who will organize a program
for (VideoBox). The intention of the organization of this
year's exhibition is to free the curatorial participants in
The Faraway Nearby and to let each artist and artwork's
voice emerge and resonate as examples of the point at
which distance and nearness collide.
Within this framework the show includes artists who
address the title in metaphorical and allegorical ways
while others may seem to literally shorten perceived
distances. Sanna Kannisto's pseudo-scientific field
studies in South America's rain forests bring viewers
face-to-face with a territorial battle of male orchid bees.
In her video projection the bees first appear to be like
regular busy-beings gathering honey. As the insects'
buzzing sound increases, an unpredictable scenario
unfolds in which the powerful, in a fierce 'survival of
the fittest' battle, take over.
By contrast, Miklos Gaal uses a telescopic lens to
literally zoom-in on distant subjects and, while blurring
all other information, replaces identity for anonymity.
His spectacular images both test the limits of our vision
and imagination.
Ilkka Halso's photographs depict our various metabolic
relationships with nature and how, with the help of
technology, certain endangered places and ecosystems
can be conserved. His constructions also reflect on the
way a museum categorizes objects, whether deriving
from nature or from tradition and cultural systems.
Juha Nenonen's video of Sao Paolo, shot at night with
long shutter speed, offers a rhythmically frenzied abstract
portrait that belies the familiar sexiness of tropical
Brazilian nights and instead, brings its faraway heartbeat
close-up. Vesa Ranta's video installation is a dark,
Gothic tale of a heavy metal group. The group fashion
themselves after today's inner-city youth culture yet, in
the interview of two members, they voice a world-view
connected to the surrounding destruction of their
environment. Living in one of the most polluted and
uninhabitable areas in Murmansk, on the border of West
Russia and Finland, they accuse globalization and come
of as derelict victims of a world faraway and out of reach.
Aino Kannisto, Aurora Reinhard, Elina Saloranta, and
Sari Tervaniemi's work all push the limits of distance
between identity of self and identity of others. Aino
Kannisto acts out a variety of fictional characters that
emerge from fantasy and from a particularly suggestive
space that has caught her imagination. She then
constructs a narration that portrays all the specific
emotions, the precise tone and mood of the character's
story.
Reinhard's video of "Julio and Lupita" dancing the tango
on a NY subway platform, is in a way documentary or a
reality show. However, as the performance progresses,
it gradually shifts into a representation of an impossible
relationship between a real man, Julio and a make-
belief woman, a doll he has named Lupita. Their dance-
date ends with a finale, in the manner of the grand
operatic tradition.
Elina Solaranta's installation of "The Lover's Bed" and
"Words Left Behind" together form a diptych whose
parts mirror each other. "The Lover's Bed" is based on
Marguerite Duras' minimalist literary structure of The
North China Lover and "Words Left Behind" is
Saloranta's rewrite of a former lover's conversation
while filming "The Lover's Bed." Seen together the
videos do not follow a storyline but instead follow Duras'
dictum: "Writing is a way of erasing things." On another
level, the work is a triangular drama in which the
characters' identities become confused, ending with
the man fantasizing about sleeping with the woman.
However it becomes clear that his fantasy is not
directed at Elina but at another woman. And when he
says: "All that remains to me of you is images. Words I
will forget," Saloranta turns this around and shows that
what is left of the lover are precisely his words.
Sari Tervaniemi who is best known for her videos,
in The Faraway Nearby shows a photo diptych
"Will-power Hero" that represents her unique view on
the underpinnings of power relationships today, the
physical and mental as experienced in both social and
personal relationships, the combine of which is political.
Finally, in (VideoBox), curator Irmeli Kokko has brought
together a 10-minute video program that combines
non-narrative videos of a particularly odd and humorous
bend by three exciting multimedia artists, Maria Duncker,
Antti Laitinen, and Minna Suoniemi.
This exhibition is sponsored by FRAME, Finnish Fund
for Art Exchange. WHITE BOX's exhibition program is
supported, in part, by the Andy Warhol Foundation for
the Visual Arts.
| BACK | White Box is a 501 (c) (3) and all donations are tax deductible to the full extent of the law. Consult your accountant and financial advisor for applicable Federal and NY State Charitable Deduction rules. |