Saara Ekström
14 Jan - 13 Mar 2011
SAARA EKSTRÖM
14 January - 13 March, 2011
Saara Ekström’s art challenges our notions of beauty
Saara Ekström’s exhibition presents a broad selection of her most recent photographicand video works. “The title of the show, Limbus, refers to an intermediate state, such asthe nebulous boundary after death and before birth. For me, it is a kind of non-place ora non-time,” says Saara Ekström.
Opposites such as beautiful and ugly, alive and dead, conscious and unconscious aresimultaneously present in Ekström’s art. The works are often graphic, such as the video installation Dust made in collaboration with the Dutch artist Thom Vink, in which iron filings move, creating changing whirlpools reminiscent of Rorschach inkblots. Ekström is interested in the interface between nature and culture, in how attention is focused in perception, and in situations that create instability. In her works, she instigates a process and allows nature to contribute to the formation of the piece through putrefaction, evaporation or wilting.
The piece on the fifth floor in Kiasma will be No Body, a three-part video piece based on a text by Ekström. The artist will also make a new version of her installation The Last Branch in which caged birds bring living nature into the museum. In the new photographic series, Limbus, floral and fruit arrangements created in natural settings continue the tradition of nature morte still lifes. Ekström’s pictures blend crime-scene photography with the aesthetics of memorial altars erected at accident sites. Using organic as well as artificial materials, Ekström creates worlds where the visible and the invisible, growth and decay, visual attractiveness and formlessness all challenge one another.
14 January - 13 March, 2011
Saara Ekström’s art challenges our notions of beauty
Saara Ekström’s exhibition presents a broad selection of her most recent photographicand video works. “The title of the show, Limbus, refers to an intermediate state, such asthe nebulous boundary after death and before birth. For me, it is a kind of non-place ora non-time,” says Saara Ekström.
Opposites such as beautiful and ugly, alive and dead, conscious and unconscious aresimultaneously present in Ekström’s art. The works are often graphic, such as the video installation Dust made in collaboration with the Dutch artist Thom Vink, in which iron filings move, creating changing whirlpools reminiscent of Rorschach inkblots. Ekström is interested in the interface between nature and culture, in how attention is focused in perception, and in situations that create instability. In her works, she instigates a process and allows nature to contribute to the formation of the piece through putrefaction, evaporation or wilting.
The piece on the fifth floor in Kiasma will be No Body, a three-part video piece based on a text by Ekström. The artist will also make a new version of her installation The Last Branch in which caged birds bring living nature into the museum. In the new photographic series, Limbus, floral and fruit arrangements created in natural settings continue the tradition of nature morte still lifes. Ekström’s pictures blend crime-scene photography with the aesthetics of memorial altars erected at accident sites. Using organic as well as artificial materials, Ekström creates worlds where the visible and the invisible, growth and decay, visual attractiveness and formlessness all challenge one another.