We are pleased to present
Paradigms of Chance,
Mikko Rikala’s second solo exhibition at Persons Projects | Helsinki School that continues his research into spatiality and temporality emerging from both philosophical and scientific nature related thoughts and practices.
Exhibition: 21 November 2020 – 6 March 2021
Venue: Persons Projects | Helsinki School, Lindenstr. 34, 10969 Berlin
The exhibition’s most prolific group of works
A Year in My Pocket, features photographs that Rikala took over four seasons from specific places in the Finnish archipelago, where he focuses on the water in its various seasonal cycles.
He subsequently
prints and folds one photograph for each season and places it in his
pocket, which he then carries throughout that season. Every so often he
would pull out the trousered photograph to document its transformation
and condition, then place it back into his pocket. Like the memories we
keep in our heads, the image is transformed over time through its
everyday use of being transported and carried.Mikko
Rikala is an artist who uses the photographic process as tool for
gathering and recording material to help him in his philosophical
pursuit of finding different ways to explore what’s behind the rational
self. Rikala states, "I’m trying to uncover the relationship between
what is seen as rational on one hand and what is perceived as irrational
on the other.” His work is a reflection that merges mystical and
philosophical thoughts through the empirical process of observation.
Unlike his previous works, where he used the photographic process to
record the now and then, these new pieces focus on the mysteries that
lie beneath the unseen. He asks, "What are the possibilities for a
person to observe and understand the world beyond the rational mind?”