Niina Hartikainen, Nanna Saarhelo, Daniel Pasteiner

Gallery Jangva 24.6.- 13.7.2003

NIINA HARTIKAINEN JA NANNA SAARHELO

Works on show: Johanna F. and do-it-yourself heroism
Satu Hatikainen - My wonderful mother
Nina Alfthan and reflections on fabric

In the commercial fashion and advertising industry, photography and clothes design work together as supporters of social stereotypes. Is it possible to use the photograph and the cloth in a different way to create conversation over a person and an identity? Can the combination of image and cloth be used as a positive tool to contemplate one’s identity?

The portraits within the project exhibited in Gallery Jangva have been prepared in close co-operation with the three women portrayed. The ideas and realisation have been discussed together from the beginning till the end - the themes of the portraits thus originate from the women themselves. The final work is an installation that consists of portrait-like entities constructed by clothes and visual elements.

As a contrast to traditional portraiture, the project aims to present a loose whole of multi-layered stories that imply and suggest instead of defining or deciding. The themes include (among others): reflecting everyday life issues in clothing, the visual fantasies related to historical myths of women, the autobiographical significance of clothing, the multiplicity of human character and the impossibility of forcing it into categorisations.

DANIEL PASTEINER - 'HOMEMOVIE' (video and sculpture)

'Homemovie' is a celebration of aimlessness and detachment, bittersweet loops of futility. It deals partly with the problematic of portraiture, by inhabiting a ghost-like person who is never concretely visible in the video.
In the beginning – still faraway from the gallery space – there were two projections on a wall, one of slides and the other of Super8 footage.

These projections showed a series of encounters with a series of unconnected young people who wander around in aimless leisure time in Europe and America. These projections wereshot on digital video to create the final piece of work 'Homemovie'.

In the video there is a hidden person: the one that is viewing the projections and changing the slides. This person is absent from the actual gallery
his place is taken by the digital projector- the slides and the Super8 film make up a clue to his portrait, as he watches the people looking for something.

Occasionally the digital camera zooms in on the Super8 projection - he falls into the film, has he found something? Yet when this happens, the film just shows travelling shots from cars: more transience and more aimlessness.
'Homemovie' is a portrait from a distance of someone lost in nostalgia
of a generation consumed by recycling the recent past.

CONTACT INFORMATION
Nanna Saarhelo email nanna_saarhelo@yahoo.co.uk
Niina Hartikainen email neanagh@hotmail.com