HANS von SCHANTZ: ENTER HELSINKI

16.5.-31.7.2012

Press Briefing on Tuesday 15.5. at 11:00.  The artist will be present.  Welcome!

Press photos

Hans von Schantz: Asematunneli (2009)

In these photographs the night encircles, isolates and simplifies the views. At the centre of observation are the anonymous architecture of the everyday and chance encounters with people. Helsinki becomes a mythical non-place.

In this summer’s main exhibition, ENTER HELSINKI, the photographic artist Hans von Schantz (b. 1961) takes us on a previously unseen descent into the reverse side of the day. The route followed by the pictures takes us from the city’s periphery towards its centre, through a rubbish dump, waste ground, industrial areas and slumbering suburbs.

Hans von Schantz: Keskuskatu (2008)

The objects of the artist’s interest are not universally recognizable landmarks. Rather, the point is to see a landscape or structure as an expression of a state of mind and to sense the atmosphere radiated by a scene and its human presence as we pass from one zone to another.

In these stunning works Schantz, who is known as a master photograph printer, combines stagelike settings with authentic shots. The most recent pictures in the exhibition, produced in the 2000s, have their own subtle world of tone and colour. This is accentuated by the superb black-and-whiteness of the exhibition’s older, urban documentary shots from the 1980s.

Hans von Schantz: Helsinki (1989)

“What interests me about photography is the relationship between the camera and time – the way that a slice of time taken out of its context has undergone a transformation while being suspended. I very rarely direct or set up photographing situations, in that sense I am a documentarist. I look for surprises brought about by the absence of control.”

Meet the Artist: Hans von Schantz talks about his exhibition (in Finnish)  on Wednesday 13.6. at 18:00. Museum entrance fee.

50+ THE FINNISH MAN – A PORTRAIT

Riitta Supperi

 16.5.-31.7.2012

Press Briefing on Tuesday 15.5. at 11:00.  The artist will be present.  Welcome!

Press photos

Riitta Supperi: Hannu Supperi, 59, Rautalampi

What do men in their fifties think? What are their hopes and dreams, and do they come true in the Finland of the 2000s?

Riitta Supperi’s (b. 1974) 50+ series of portraits talks about Finnish men in an understated, respectful way. Ninety five ‘milieu portraits’ taken around the country deal with the lives of ‘ordinary’ 50–59-year-old men and with turning points in those lives.

Riitta Supperi: Risto Voutilainen, 59, Kuopio

“I investigated a group of Finns that is hardly visible in the media. The fifty-year-old man has been forgotten by the magazine world, where ecstatic women get to celebrate their second youth. Fifty-year-old men only make it onto the pages of newspapers in opinion polls. Although fifty-year-old politicians and company directors are more prominent.”
 
Supperi began the series by photographing her own father. “When taking the pictures, I thought about what his life is really like and what will it be like when he is facing retirement. I thought about why my father had become the way he is. Did his dreams come true, had his life been successful up to that point? Would he in the future face Finnish men’s problems, such as social exclusion or alcoholism, or would he enter a serene old age, or even a second youth?”

Riitta Supperi: Seppo Salmela, 53, Kustavi

Meet the Artist: Riitta Supperi talks about her exhibition (in Finnish) on Friday 23. 3.  at 18:00 and on Wednesday 6.6. at 18:00. Museum entrance fee.

Marcus Hansson: Souvenir 

8.6.-5.8.2012

Press briefing on Thursday 7.6. at 11:00. Opening 7.6. at 17–19. The artist will be present. Welcome!

Press Photos

The Swedish artist Marcus Hansson views the world through the torrent of news reports, incorporating news images from the BBC and Al Jazeera into his artworks. In this “souvenir shop” everything is for sale at an affordable price.

Hansson’s works occupy the terrain between documentary, fiction and art.  Anything or anyone captured from the news stream could become material for his work. 

Hansson photographs this material from TV transmissions while on his own sofa at home. From the stream of news our gaze turns to production and commercialism. Hansson has had paintings made of his photographs in Shen Zhen, China. There, in the oil-painting village of Dafen, hundreds of painters mostly work hand copying the masterpieces of painting. Hansson first found the village on YouTube.

Viewers can order a painting to be commissioned based on one of the photographs in the set of works on display. Everything in the exhibition is also for sale.

www.marcushansson.com

Marcus Hansson: Refugees in the Sun

Aida Chehrehgosha: To mom, dad and my two brothers

 4.5.-3.6.2012 Project Space

Press Photos

Born in Tehran in Iran, Aida Chehrehgosha spent her childhood surrounded by violence and constant fear. Both her parents took out their frustrations on their children. It was only as an adult that Chehrehgosha began to understand the harshness of her childhood experiences. This led to the series of photographs To mom, dad and my two brothers.

Aida Chehrehgosha: Dad by the water, From the Series Dead Parents, Chapter III (2008)

In Chehrehgosha’s pictures her own parents are shown dead. The precise methodicalness and staging are a part of the process through which the photographer dares herself to face up to the anger that she felt towards her father and mother. The parents lying dead replicate the fantasies of her youth.

Even though depictions of death are an extreme means of dealing with negative emotions, for Chehrehgosha, this also works in the opposite direction. The desire to break away from her parents is combined with the fear of losing them, and with the love for them that is concealed beneath it all. This contradiction generated by extremes of feeling guides Chehrehgosha’s working process, a process through which she tries to understand her family’s situation.

To mom, dad and my two brothers is Aida Chehrehgosha’s first solo exhibition in Finland.

Studio – a Moment between body and clothes

1.6–26.8.2012, Note! Exhibition only open at weekends June 4–22.

Press Photos

Press briefing on Thursday 3.5. at 11. Opening on Thursday 3.5. at 17–19.

Merja Hannikainen and Vappu Jalonen

On two weekends in February, photographer Merja Hannikainen (b.1982) and artist Vappu Jalonen (b.1979) set up a studio in the Museum’s Process space.

More than 40 participants designed and constructed temporary clothes for themselves out of a pile of fabrics, and were then photographed. This designing and dressing gave them a chance to express a fantasy, a role, or a part of their identity not often seen in everyday life. Because the clothes were not readymade, they may also have left room for different corporealities.

“It was important to us that less visible bodies were also on display in the project: queers, people with disabilities, fat people, and not just young people. In the shoots we also wanted to provide an unrestricted opportunity for expressing masculinity or femininity, regardless of gender.”

The exhibition takes the form of a projection.

Exhibition partners:  Cultural accessibility project Utopia Helsinki, www.utopiahelsinki.wordpress.com and supporters Angel Films and Color-Kolmio.

http://studiotemporaryclothes.tumblr.com/

Events: Meet the artists, Thursday 23.8 at 18:00. Free entrance.