"I Plunge into Black Holes and Emerge Intact"

Opening: Friday, June 26 2015, 6 – 9 pm
Duration: June 27 - September 12, 2015 
Participating artists: Niko Luoma, Ola Kolehmainen, Adam Jeppesen, Niina Vatanen, Mikko Sinervo 


I move freely between the sun and the moon.
I go further
I plunge into black holes and emerge intact.
I ride on comets, count galaxies.
I’m on speaking terms with lights-years.

- Etel Adnan ©
In the heart of the heart of another country, 2005.

"I plunge into black holes and emerge intact” is the continuation in the series of group shows showing new positions in photography, within the Gallery program of conceptually rigorous artistic practitioners. The summer show takes its point of departure in a poem by the Lebanese-American poet, essayist and visual artist, Etel Adnan, whose thoughts on the importance of light and luminosity, abstraction and consciousness will form the core of the display. Placing viewers in a realm of visual perceptual experience, the exhibition explores contemporary abstraction in photography and the permanence of light: its cosmic origins, multifaceted uses and atmospheres, which are highlighted through five different approaches of singular artists.

Curated by Maya Byskov, Laura García M-T and Terhi Tuomi.

Niko Luoma (1970) is interested not in what is in front of the camera, but what is inside it. He uses light as the raw material of his highly analytical photographic approach. For Luoma, light is an active matter, which he ‘contains’ through a calculated, analogue technique of exposing a single negative to lines of light, sometimes up to thousands of times. Niko Luoma’s new relief work not only illustrates the complex methodology of his photographic process, but also traces the ability of light to unfold forms otherwise hidden to the naked eye.

Ola Kolehmainen (1964) uses the capability of light to reveal surfaces, forms and colours. For Kolehmainen, architecture is a starting point and source of inspiration for his work. He examines space, light and color, and through this reflects upon and questions how one looks at things and why. On display in the exhibition are his Milano Wall Paintings, in which the façade is reduced to abstract forms and blocks of color. As in Adnan’s poem, Kolehmainen "goes further” and frames our perception to see only light on a surface.

In Adam Jeppesen’s (1978) body of work light, sometimes clear but most times misty, is an essential component in his atmospheric contemplations. The artist has spent the better part of his life traveling, searching, and in this process brings to the fore the very essence of being and forgetting, with an emotional and aesthetic clarity afforded only by solitude.  His focus is on landscapes and our fleeting relationship to it.

Niina Vatanen (1977) has in her most recent series, Archival Studies used a photo collection from the Finnish museum of Photography as a point of departure for her study of the skeletons of analogue photography. The works on display show rare archival photographic paper, which have been exposed to nothing but different shades of sunlight through time. In these works, sunlight plays an active role in manifesting time, that, is making it visible.

As in Vatanen’s works Mikko Sinervo (1981) too uses light as a co-author. However, he is more interested in understanding the source of cosmic light. Sinervo asks himself questions about the shape and the size of the cosmos. What do planets look like? Black holes? How fast can a comet fly? Trying to materialize the diversity and distance in infinite space, his photographs invite us into his imaginative exploration. Sinervo attempts to ride on comets, count galaxies. Be on speaking terms with light-years.

-Maya Byskov

The Gallery would like to express their most sincere gratitude to Etel Adnan for allowing us to use her poem in the exhibition and White Cube for their collaboration.