Welcome to the exhibition opening on Thursday, July 3rd, 6-8 pm. Free admission!
Program:
Thu July 3rd: Performance 6:30 pm–7 pm.
Sun August 3rd: Performance 2 pm–2:45 pm, artist meeting 2:45 pm–4 pm
Thu August 14th Turku Night of the Arts: Performance and discussion 7 pm–8 pm
Durations is a multimedia body of work, consisting of two-sided ink drawings on paper; a soundscape filling the space; elements containing light, programming and electronics; and performances.
Images and sounds are created simultaneously and in interaction. Mari Kämäräinen uses different papers, inks, and brushes as her media. Hannu Seppälä’s instrument is a self-built analogical modular synthetizator that creates sounds directly from electric voltage. Sound is thus created simultaneously with the drawings, without any preexisting samples or digital sounds. The elements of the modular synthetizator are connected using patch cables, and together, they form a new instrument every time. Without the cables, the synthetizator is a blank canvas that creates no sounds. Both sound and drawing start from the scratch once the artists’ work begins.
There isn’t just one right way or direction to look at these images. The line is both a recording of the session and an expression of duration, a container for the time loaded on the surface. Shapes and rhythms remind us of structures that are characteristic to untamed nature, but do not portray any of these. The shapes in nature are characterized both by free expression and conforming to the boundaries set by the surrounding circumstances – they just are.
For the spectator experiencing the art, much of the quality and depth of a body of work comes from the time spent with the piece of art in question. Time is also at the heart of these artists’ work: expanding and modifying the event of seeing, sensitizing it and returning to the basic sensory experiences. There is a wide variety of ways to look at an image. The duration, quality and intensity of these gazes vary, and it is precisely the differences between these ways and rhythms of looking that these works aim to depict and use. The works are given characteristics of an active party, an entity: some images seem to choose what they allow their spectators to see, and leave the rest in the dark, a secret.
Mari Kämäräinen (1987, Vaala, Finland), is a Turku-based artist who uses performance, spatial and earth art, drawing and storytelling as here media. Her work is often site and situation specific, and she has worked both in a team, with a partner, and in other collaborative forms. In addition to Turku, Kämäräinen has recently been working near her roots in Northern Ostrobothnia and Kainuu, collaborating for instance with the Northern Opera Company. Hannu Seppälä (1980, Oulu, Finland) is a sound artist, working both with musical and performative solo projects and collaborative projects in the field of fine arts and theatre. Seppälä’s most important recent solo project has been Kempele, a musical and audiovisual performance he has performed in various contexts both in Finland and abroad.
Kämäräinen and Seppälä have been collaborating since 2018. They have had exhibitions and performances in B-galleria, Ars Libera, opening party of Manifest festival, Open House event of Mustarinda, and the Huoneiden kirja production that was awarded the State Prize for Performing Arts in 2021.