Niko Luoma - Equations

Niko Luoma - Equations

Exhibition: 30 April – 27 June 2010
Address: Bergstr. 22, 10115 Berlin – Mitte

Gallery TAIK proudly presents the exhibition Equations by Finnish photographer Niko Luoma.
Selected works from his two series Cronos (2007) and Symmetrium (2009) will be shown. Luoma´s interest is to visualize time with the means of analogue photography. Therefore he "draws" with light - which fits in well with the etymology of the word photography (gr. photos light, graphein to draw).

Some of Niko Luoma´s basic principles can be exemplified by his blackrn and white series Cronos from 2007. These photographs are based on a rnseries of drawings he made as sketches using light as his raw material. rn"The drawings are about how daylight reflects from everyday objects on rnmy working table at my studio, and how light reflects off from the rncorners and edges of empty buildings on the shipyard around my studio. rnWhile making a drawing I only draw highlights, the areas where the lightrn hits the hardest on the target creating a flare. Through the movement rnof the sun they are changing. I draw these highlights as lines, one rndrawing a day from sunrise to sunset. At the end of a day I had an rnabstract notation of a day's passage. Because I am interested in light rnand it's movements, from past to present. I decided to reconstruct thesern drawings and photograph them. Each line is created and photographed by rnusing a studio flash and a large format camera, one line at a time. The rnsheet of film is exposed multiple times, until all the lines in the rndrawing appear in the photograph. The fascination for me is the process rnof how objects and even spaces could be freed from their physical rnexistence, to be just ideas."

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In front of a deep black background are set elegant, minimalist and rnsurprisingly spatial nettings of lines created out of gleaming, eruptingrn light.

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A graphical, linear principle can also be found in Luoma´s latest rnseries Symmetrium. These photographs are realized upon a stronger rnmathematical system. Creating visual equations, based on the colors red rnand green, again he deals with light. What at first sight may appear as rncomputer graphics is in fact created and photographed in the artist´s rnstudio only with analogue technics. With colour filters and the rnprinciple of multiple exposure Luoma creates symmetrical compositions rnwithin several weeks time. The symmetry is also used with the colours. rnThere are equal numbers of red and green lines that vary in color and rnlength. About the subject Luoma underlines that "it is inspired by rnnature in flux, everyday events, chaos, and by accident."
rn- Jenny Rosemarie Mannhardt