10/1/2008
Image and After
Kiasma, Helsinki
The exhibition presents work from Kiasma's collection that approach the themes of image and its absence from a variety of perspectives. It delves into one of the main questions within art, the image, its perception, meaning and its existence (or non-existence) in the contemporary art.
Contemporary art often has nothing to do with images in frames, yet the concept and nature of the image remain fundamental questions of art. Image and After presents work from Kiasma’s collection that approach the themes of image and its absence from a variety of perspectives.
The exhibition is organised under four themes: Imminent Image; Syntaxes of the Image; Written Image, Painted Word; and Attitude as Method: Series, Repetition, Event. The resultant whole opens up possible views on the birth of the image, the boundaries between figurative and non-figurative art, and the interrelations of images and words. Contemporary art also shows us how new pictures can be made by using earlier images and conventions of representation.
IMMINENT IMAGE is about the birth of the picture, an open situation between the known and the unknown. There are actually two moments of birth: at first the artist stands in front of an empty canvas, sheet of paper or behind a video camera, waiting for or activating the appearance of the picture. The resultant picture is a suggestion by the artist to the viewer. Later, the viewer stands in front of the work, giving it a personal inter- pretation. There are two images also in the viewer’s perception: the suggestion presented by the work, which in the viewer’s mind becomes associated with earlier visual, verbal or bodily experiences.
SYNTAXES OF THE IMAGE explores painting as a visual language with different ‘syntaxes’, codes or rules that are used or violated by artists when making their paintings and other images. Such rules often consist of practices and conventions, which are established into signs of a kind. Such signs include the division of the pictorial surface into a grid, or treating it as a monochrome field of colour and a surface/object, but they can also be explorations of the physical aspects of colour or the presentation of the traces of the artist’s hand as signs of the moment of creation. Media art and digital images present a different chapter altogether in the story of the image.
WRITTEN IMAGE, PAINTED WORD examines the relationship between picture and word in contemporary art, where narrative and verbal elements are often removed entirely. Nevertheless many works of art come with verbal meanings, either in their title or as textual elements in the work itself. How we look and read, or perceive and understand, seems to be a central preoccupation for contemporary artists. Brushstrokes can be read and words be viewed as images. What do we actually see when reading a picture, what do we read when looking at writing?
ATTITUDE AS METHOD: SERIES, REPETITION, EVENT approaches the artworks from the perspectives of time and duration. Seriality can be both an artistic method and a display strategy. In works of different media, temporality is expressed differently: through the repetition and rhythm of motifs, as serial and linear structures, and as cyclical and repetitive presentations. Contemporary artists often change their method and media depending on the work. When methods vary, the common thread in an artist’s production has become the artist’s attitude towards art and the world. That attitude can be critical, for example, or the complete opposite, aspiring to the expression of intimate, personal tones.
Kiasma
Mannerheiminaukio 2 - Helsinki
Opening hours
Tue: 10 am-5 pm,
Wed-Sun: 10 am-8.30 pm,
Closed on Mondays
Admission
Tickets 7e/5e
Under 18 year-olds free.
Free admission on the first Wednesday of the month at 5-8 pm.