Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #8
SITE • BODY • ARCHITECTURE
Mobilizing The Still Image In Hannu Karjalainen’s Video Art
Hannu Karjalainen in dialogue with Hu Sang
14th December 2014
19:00 — 21:00
At MINSHENG ART MUSEUM, Shanghai
MOMENTUM Berlin and Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai are proud to present the collaborative project: Time_Art_Impact, a year-long education program of dialogues between media artists from the MOMENTUM Collection and key figures from the Shanghai art scene. Time_Art_Impact is the inaugural program of the new Media Library at Minsheng Art Museum, which will use the MOMENTUM Collection of international video art as a basis for a series of monthly cross-cultural dialogues via live-stream between Berlin, Shanghai and the rest of the world.
More information about the project here.
Read about the event on the MINSHENG ART MUSEUM web-site here.
Finnish-born, Berlin-based artist Hannu Karjalainen develops his video practice from a grounding in photography and his training in the Helsinki School. Woman on the Beach is a photograph activated into a subtle poetic motion, rewarding the viewer for taking the time to watch it unfold.
In subsequent work Karjalainen uses the medium of the moving image to reflect back upon painting and the material qualities of paint.
Colour is an elusive subject matter. It is intangible and abstract as much as it is coded, branded and harnessed for different purposes. Hannu Karjalainen is particularly interested in how meaning is attributed to a colour, and how this mechanism can be exploited by re-contextualization, using colour and its supposed meaning as a critical tool to investigate the world around us. In an ongoing series of works that turn classical portrait photographs into moving color palets, Karjalainen again mobilizes the traditionally still image. Looking at painting through photography, its role becomes reversed.
Woman on the Beach (2009)
Woman on the Beach, which was part of MOMENTUM’s inaugural collection show in 2010, is a photograph activated into a subtle poetic motion, rewarding the viewer for taking the time to watch it unfold. In subsequent works Karjalainen uses the medium of the moving image to reflect back upon painting and the material qualities of paint. Color, for Karjalainen, is an elusive subject, intangible and abstract as much as it is culturally coded. How meaning is attributed to color and how this process can be exploited by recontextualization make up the foundation of Karjalainen’s aesthetic investigations. He often begins with a narrative story, which he visually abstracts to the point of unrecognizability, forcing the viewer to infer any original backstory. In a similar ongoing series that turns classical portrait photographs into moving color palettes, of which Woman on the Beach is a part, Karjalainen mobilizes the traditionally still image. Following inclusion of one of Karjalainen’s works, Nanjing Grand Theatre, in the 2013 exhibition Missing Link, MOMENTUM looks forward to future collaborations with the artist.
- Josephine English Cook
Nanjing Grand Theatre (2012)
Nanjing Grand Theatre explores the memory inherited in an architectonic site. The Nanjing Grand Thetre, a western classical style building designed by Chinese architects originally housed western cinema in the 1930s Shanghai. During the Cultural Revolution the building was dedicated to Beijing Opera and temporarily called Revolution Concert Hall. Now renamed Shanghai Concert Hall, the building is a prime location for classical music concerts. The massive construction plans in the Shanghai city centre called for the demolition of the building several times, as it was both in the way of a highway and a metro line. Finally a different solution was found: in early 2000s the building was moved from it’s original location by lifting the whole 5650 ton building up 3.38 meters and dragging the building to a new location some 70 meters southeast. The video work is shot on the original site of the concert hall, where an elevated highway now passes through the city. Passing lights and shadows take human forms as we hear snippets from the soundtrack of the very first film screened in Nanjing Grand Theatre, Broadway (1929). The film adaptation of the musical is now deemed lost in its original form, with only an edited version made from separate silent and talkie versions existing.
ABOUT HU SANG
Hu Sang is a Shanghai-based poet and critic. Currently pursuing a PhD in Philosophy from Tongji University, Hu has published in various journals and books, including Shan Hua, Shu Cheng, Poetry Journal, Poetry Monthly, Shanghai Literature and Shanghai Cultural.
