HELI REKULA
Stage | Näyttämö 4.5.-8.6.2008
“An inexplicable, vague feeling, a skein of thoughts and associations takes shape in my mind as an image, an image which plagues me until I record it in the form of a note or a visual work.”* – Heli Rekula
Gallery Kalhama & Piippo Contemporary is pleased to open the solo exhibition of Heli Rekula, one of the most remarkable photographers in Finland. It has been over three years since Rekula had her last exhibition in Helsinki. After her retrospective exhibition in Contemporary Art Museum Kiasma in 2005 she has presented her work in various international venues.
Alongside totally new photographic and moving image works the exhibition Stage / Näyttämö presents Rekula’s recent body of work, which have not been exhibited in Finland before. New body of work in the field of moving image will also be seen in this exhibition.
In her art, Rekula brings out subject matters like cultural ideals of beauty and the questions of normative identity construction. In her exhibition at Kalhama&Piippo Rekula deepens her insights on photographic time and space as well as its performative nature.
In her images Rekula builds situations to raise sudden associations. The materials she uses are taken from everyday life but are transformed into something else by combining them unexpectedly. Flowing liquids, feathers or wrinkled fabrics cause a feeling that something doesn’t stay in its shape or the limits of human body but rather overflows uncontrollably.
For Rekula photography is a performance. In her new photographic works there is a more intense focus on the question of posing than before. Being an object is also one of the crucial subject matters in Rekula’s work. Her images of human beings are like private performance acts for the camera, but instead of exposing, she covers her characters. Sometimes the artist is a model herself but even then the character is to be interpreted through the anonymity of the person.
In the works of Rekula’s moving image the strong photographic thinking is still present. Her spatial and temporal moving image works make the positive exception in the vast supply of today’s narrative video. For Rekula video is not just a story projected on a flat screen. Instead she builds spatial, comprehensive and continuous atmospheres in her
space installations and almost statue-like objects.
- Pilvi Kalhama
Helsinki based artist Heli Rekula (b.1963) works with lense-based media. She was rewarded with Ars Fennica Price in 2002 and State Price for Photographic Art in2005. She has taken part in several group exhibitions abroad and her video works have been presented in various film festivals in Finland and abroad. This exhibition is part of Heli Rekula’s artistic doctoral studies at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts.
*In the article Heli Rekula: “The Unnamed Space of Experience”, in the book: Toisaalta tässä / Here Then. (ed. Mika Elo), TaiK, KuvA 2007.
Gallery Kalhama & Piippo Contemporary