Saturday, November 22, 2008

Sunday Entry: Pertti Kekarainen
















Photographer Pertti Kekarainen, along with Aino Kannisto, Ville Lenkkeri, and Elina Brotherus is another gifted artist to belong to the Helsinki School of Art in Finland. He was born in 1965 and continues to explore the concepts that he developed while in graduate school. Kekarainen originally studied both sculpture and painting, and began applying his skill in those areas to photography in 1993. His series of interiors entitled, "Tila" deals with the idea of space, three-dimensionality, and focus. While these images are devoid of people, centering instead on interiors and perspective, another recent series, which bares the same title, "Tila" depicts figures moving in and out of a white room. The figures are cropped closely, so that much of their bodies are out of frame, leaving their shadows at the center of the photographs. These shadows stand in for the figures and represent the ideas and conversations the characters are involved in. Without the aid of digital manipulation, the artist adds colored dots to the images, which are reminiscent of apparitions in early spirit photography. The figures are both absent and present at the same instant. Kekarainen presents these color photographs at full scale and hangs them low on gallery walls so that viewers can fully interact with the figures and interiors.

I hope that my artwork progresses in a direction similar to that of Pertti Kekarainen's. The absent subject is the focus of my current series of photographs, and I love how, in this artist's work, the shadows are more fully realized than the figures. The veil of colored dots within the images add another layer of intrigue and complexity that works extremely well.


http://www.helsinkischool.fi/helsinkischool/artist.php?id=9021



http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=5132959


http://www.artnews.org/gallery.php?i=384&exi=11088

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