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5/6/2014

Hans Rosenstrom

Helsinki Contemporary, Helsinki

A work, Hans Rosenström’s work. That work is emphatically in space, made out of space. And not just in any space, but specifically here and now, in the gallery, and precisely the way it is. On its own terms, personally.

Through spatial intervention the gallery space is made individual, into a situation not previously experienced. It changes from general to specific. Perception slows, and in so doing brings about a thickening, an electrification of the space. Via a unique experientiality the situation of the site constitutes an occasion – becoming an event.

Space, situation, occasion and spatiality.

Half Full gets time-and-site-specific content. It consists of gestures and actions that simultaneously open up and close down – attracting us and pushing us away. In the spatial experience our imagination is sharpened, it is actualised, it forms a story, which is shared and passed on; it is quarrelled about and argued over, but it is continued. In everyday life, where else?

In that everyday big little, little big story that equally goes pretty much according to expectations and yet – so that it stays meaningful – is really surprising, and enigmatic. It is equally a liberation and a surrender, a going along with things, participating, as well as throwing yourself into them, influencing and being influenced.

“The space is polymorphous and interesting in itself, so I finally decided not to bring anything else into the space, but to use the existing lights and the gallery space itself as the material for the work. For me an artwork comes about in an encounter, so what is important to me is trying to create as strong as possible a tension between the lights, the space and the viewer. In this work I am interested in how an apparently empty space can be made into a work, i.e. making use of the elements in the space as the circumstances allow.”

“The most important element in the work is the spatial experience itself, when we are no longer talking solely about the quality of the light, even though everything else comes to be significant: the tension between the body and the space, the marks worn into the floor, or the low hum of the air conditioning. All of these things become a part of the story, which is built into the relationship with the viewer.”

The exhibition carries on organically in the gallery’s office spaces. The whole thing combines and articulates the public and the private, space that is open to everyone and space restricted to the personal. The office space is experienced alone, just one viewer at a time. The space is both strange and familiar – amenable to a differentiated experience, rewarding. The space contains its own sound work, plus drawings and video.

“Kaiken osana is a sound work on headphones for one viewer at a time in the gallery’s office space. It constitutes an intimate encounter that plays with the relationship between the listener and the sound, at precisely the moment when it is being experienced. I also wanted something human in the exhibition to act as a contrast to the intervention made in the exhibition space.”

This is about telling a bodily, participatory story, from space to space and back, twisting, transmuting and transforming – over and over again. Opening up and opening out, participating and feeling yourself a part: inventing and finding, feeling surprise and wistful longing. Movement and trajectory, framework and content. And intervention in space, about a situation. About respecting it, about enjoying the possibilities of existing with it.

Mika Hannula

Image: Hans Rosenström, sketch of the work Half Full, 2014

Opening on Friday 6th June at 5pm-7pm.

Helsinki Contemporary
Bulevardi 10 - 00120 Helsinki
Opening Hours
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday
 11 – 17
Thursday 
11 – 18
Saturday – Sunday
 12 – 16
Special Opening Hours
The gallery is open 12 – 16 on 29.5. due to Ascension Day.
The gallery is open 11 – 15 on 19.6. and closed 20. – 22.6. due to Midsummer holidays.
The gallery is closed 7.7. – 7.8. for a summer break.

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