Marko Vuokola: Sense and Sensibility 8.6.−15.9.2024
Press release 23.5.2024
Marko Vuokola: Sense and Sensibility
8.6.-15.9.2024
Ars Nova, 2nd floor
Marko Vuokola’s poetic conceptual art explores perception and experience. Our way of being here is about understanding the world from a human perspective. The viewer and the object cannot be separated. We seek meaning in our existence through our relationship with the world.
Our experience is defined by temporality. We observe changes in relation to time. Vuokola’s two-part photographic works show that we exist in a moment that will never be repeated. Between two consecutive photos, everything has changed.
Vuokola’s unassuming and thoughtful works create a space for sharpening of the senses. Faithful to minimalism, Vuokola focuses on the temporal qualities of photography and the moving image. Authorship, style and identity are faded into the background, preserving a sensiblemix of romanticism and analyticity. The works subtly lead you to contemplate – and thus to figure it out for yourself.
Repetition is common trait in Vuokola’s works. In most cases, the works consist of two parts. Two (plurality) makes the difference. The juxtaposition of two images or objects radically interferes with the ideality, the established form – the identity – of one image. Attention is drawn to the continuous movement in which thinking and ethics operate.
What is essential in Vuokola’s works is the manifestation of difference. The serial logic of the works does not seem to be at all interested in the original object or work, but the works are created from each other. Vuokola’s art is successfully hyper-real: although it operates with copies, it does not lose touch with our senses or our ability to create meaning.
Sense and Sensibility presents a versatile visual artist whose work has never been shown in Turku before. The exhibition includes works from the last 30 years.
This minimalist exhibition of photographs, video art and sculptures focuses on temporality and repetition. Vuokola’s analytical and human approach offers the viewer insights large and small – without forgetting beauty.
The photographs in the exhibition have been selected from a few of Vuokola’s key series. The works from The Seventh Wave series (2001–) are diptychs. The same subject is depicted at different times, creating a temporal and eventful relationship between the two images. The Spaceliner works (2013–) and the photo of the Speedmaster I wristwatch, which was exposed for 24 hours (2016), show the movement of both light and time, although they are still images.
Extremely minimalist video works such as Rakkauden valtameri (Ocean of Love) (2023) and RGB 4x 16777216 (2024) consist almost exclusively of colours. RGB is a stunningly experiential work on the theoretical RGB colour space. In Ocean of Love, two wandering hairlines create a contemplative moment. In the exhibition’s title work Sense and Sensibility (2023), the lights on Utö lighthouse flash when filmed from the island of Jurmo. One of the videos was shot using a tripod and the other using a hand-held camera.
Typical of conceptual art, the 3D-printed sculptures Etäisyys I & II-Dopplerin ilmiö (Distance I & II, the Doppler Effect (2023) and the photographic work Dopplerin ilmiö (the Doppler Effect) (2021) also take as their starting point the effect of the direction of movement of the object producing the sound. In the works, the idea of the Doppler effect is transferred to the internal relations and meanings of the image and the sculpture.
Kultalanka (Gold Thread) (1994–1995) highlights the effort behind Vuokola’s apparent effortlessness. In the summer of 1994, he dug and panned for gold in Lapland. The gold that he found has been stretched into a thread almost 5 metres long. Turning an idea into a finished form is the result of hard work.
Marko Vuokola lives and works in Helsinki. His studio is located in Kalervo Kallio’s atelier house in Munkkiniemi. Studio GNTV is the unofficial name of the community that has been working together for a long time in the building, which also includes the artist duo Grönlund-Nisunen and Mika Taanila. Vuokola is a passionate sailor who is familiar with Airisto near Turku and with the Baltic Sea. Romantic references to the sea and the archipelago can be found in his work, dating back 30 years.
Vuokola’s most recent solo exhibitions include Ocean of Love (2023) in Kunsthalle Helsinki, When is Now (2018), Green Flash (2016) and Photography and Video (2013) in Galerie Anhava.
He has also participated in several group exhibitions, including Subterranean (2022) at Amos Rex, Diversity United (2021) at Tempelhof Airport in Berlin and In the Collection at Trondheim Art Museum (2012–13) and Galerie 21 in Malmö. The latest group exhibition Motus will be held together with artist friends Jyrki Siukonen and Tuomas Korkalo at Himmelblau Printmaking Studio in Tampere in May 2024.
Vuokola’s works are part of several collections, including those of the National Gallery Kiasma, EMMA – City of Espoo, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation and the Finnish Museum of Photography. His works are also in the collections of the cities of Helsinki, Hämeenlinna, Pori and Tampere, as well as in private collections in Finland and abroad. Vuokola has also created several public works such as OLO No. 44,for the Faculty of Education at the University of Turku (2009).
The Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike) has supported the artist’s work. The exhibition has received funding from the Finnish Heritage Agency.
More information
Niina Tanskanen
curator
niina.tanskanen@avan.fi
040 585 44 99
