Heini Ahon näyttely The Primary Force Behind an Everyday Experience (8.–31.1.2016) avaa Titanik-gallerian vuoden 2016 näyttelyohjelman.
Ahon installaatiot käsittelevät tasapainoa ja painovoimaa. Usein teosten materiaalinen kokonaisuus tarjoaa alustan liikkuvan kuvan performatiivisuudelle. Näyttelyssä on esillä video- ja tilateoksia tasapainosta.
Playing with Dragon – videossa leikitellään tulella. Henkilö pinoaa huteria asetelmia palavien kynttilöiden alle. Illuusio turvallisuudesta tai vaarallisuuden kaukaisuudesta saattaa etäännyttää elämästä. Vaaran välttäminen alkaa määritellä päivän kulkua ja sitä mitä teemme elämämme aikana.
Näyttelyn tilateoksissa tarkastellaan hetkeä jolloin asiat näyttäisivät loksahtavan paikoilleen. Pyörivän valon liikuttamat varjot imitoivat päivän kulkua ja elämän sykliä. Ne pinoutuvat, kasaantuvat ja roikkuvat. Ajatukset muotoutuvat ja hajoavat liikkuvien varjojen lailla. Ahon taiteessa ominaista ovat hienovaraiset muutokset, jotka asettavat tavanomaiset objektit uuteen milenkiintoiseen valoon.
Heini Aho (1979) työskentelee ja asuu Turussa keskittyen videoilmaisun yhdistämiseen kuvanveiston kanssa. Hän on valmistunut Turun Taideakatemiasta kuvataiteilijaksi ja Helsingin Kuvataideakatemiasta kuvataiteen maisteriksi.
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WORKING AGAINST THE IMPOSSIBLE
– REFLECTIONS ON HEINI AHO’S ART
Heini Aho’s works reveal a rupture in the everyday, thriving towards disjunction, immateriality and anti-gravity, a sort of immortality of the objects – as she describes. Things of the universe such as black holes and blind black space are repeated in a number of ways in her works creating a counterpart to worldly associations. Being intrigued by illusions and stories her practice touches also the field of scenography such as film sets – a space where the impossible becomes possible.
Aho states that small revelations and shifts in perception can transform dull objects into something new and wonderful. One of her recollections seems particularly describing:
On one mundane winternight I noticed my jacket and scarf, which I had just thrown on a table, reflected by the window as colorful piles of cloth shifted in to the middle of the yard. Something I normally overlook suddenly became visible to me.
Aho ended up working with her newly found phenomenon in Wishful thinking (2012), an installation in which an immaterial reflection completes the view on the other side of the glass creating an illusionary whole. The ghostly palimpsest (layered object) formed by interrelated images suggests how presentness and memory become overlapsed in our experience.
Connected to the themes of memory and passing time Aho finds inspiration in endlessly accumulating dust which in her work becomes a metaphor for the material consequences of time as in the video Dust draws out the treasures (2014). Endless renovation (2014) takes another, perhaps more abstract approach to depicting time. The installation looks like a fragment of a room comprising of strange compositions where familiar items start to lose their conventional characters and meanings. As the title Endless renovation already hints the work seems to picture life – as well as the production of meaning, as being always in between and never settling.
The themes of working with and against gravity and hence the impossible continue in Aho’s resent multimedia installationPlaying with the dragon (2015). In the encompassing video we see someone building an unnervingly unstable assemblage using variously shaped blocks of wood and burning candles. The outcome confirms us that the moment when things seem to fall apart might as well be the moment when things fall into place, at least for a moment. The work brings to mind Aho’s statement concerning the basis of her artistic practice:
The motivation to search for intensity in life increases at the realization and acceptance of its transient nature.
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Text: Hanna Seppänen
