PHOTOGRAPHIC GALLERY HIPPOLYTE
Kalevankatu 18 B, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
+358 9 612 33 44, www.hippolyte.fi
Open: Tue–Fri 12–17, Sat–Sun 12–16

 

13 August – 5 September 2010
Ari Kakkinen
e i t

Welcome to the opening on Thursday 12 August 5-7 p.m.
Discussion Wed 18.8 5 p.m. Jan Kaila and Ari Kakkinen

 

In the e i t exhibition, Ari Kakkinen presents photographic abstractions through which perception, language, thinking and images are forced out to their furthest boundaries – to touch one another. Thinking about the relationship between images and words through the concept of touch undermines the privileged position of the word (or language or theory). Kakkinen wants to reflect upon and formulate how words do not speak about the image, but to and with the image.

In his exhibition, Kakkinen explores photographic practices that are either non-representative or specifically aim to interrogate representation and figurativeness. Consequently, a key aspect of his latest works is absentation, which could be described as the presentation of absence. Kakkinen’s exhibition asks: is such a thing as photographic absentation possible? What is absent, or what is under erasure? Kakkinen’s works investigate whether the object of interrogation might thereby be the image itself – the fact that the image is made to be looked at. What is an image that refuses to let itself be looked at; what if an image is not an image?

For Kakkinen, photographic abstraction is something fundamentally different from what is conventionally understood by the term ‘abstraction’. For him, the dispersive yet essential relationship of photography to phenomenological reality is crucial. Even to the extent that the concept of abstraction should be defined differently in photography.

 

Ari Kakkinen (b. 1966) is an artist photographer based in Helsinki. His latest solo exhibitions were in Innsbruck, Berlin and Seoul. His most recent one-man show in Finland was in the Kluuvi Gallery in 2007.

Throughout his artistic career, Kakkinen has gravitated towards an area defined by visual art and the history and theory of art. His way of steeping himself in conceptual themes is exceedingly thorough. A charged connection is formed between artistic and theoretical approaches, with differing parts supporting and lifting each other up.

The “e i t” exhibition is part of Ari Kakkinen’s doctoral dissertation for the School of Art and Design at Aalto University.

Ari Kakkinen Inscription XX (ce qui n'existe pas), 2009

For more information and press images, please contact:
Petronella Grönroos, exhibition co-ordinator / Photgraphic Gallery Hippolyte +358 9-612 33 44, firstname.lastname@hippolyte.fi