PHOTOGRAPHIC GALLERY HIPPOLYTE
Kalevankatu 18 B, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
+358 9 612 33 44, www.hippolyte.fi
Open: Tue-Fri 12:00-17:00, Sat-Sun 12:00-16:00

5.-28.2.2010
JANI RUSCICA
Parallel Acts

Artist Talk Wednesday Feb 10, 5 p.m. - Welcome! (in Finnish)

Jani Ruscica's latest work is entitled Beginning an Ending (2009). In the video, appearing casually by their first names Virve, Jorma, Mikko, Anni, Vesa, Pirjo and Sulo describe future events. The future in the work is neither public nor private, but something in between.

Beginning an Ending uses similar devices as Ruscica's earlier videos. It too has seven stories, just like Evolutions (2008), and the cameras and the studio are occasionally 'revealed', with pictorial realism giving way to the actual shooting situation. Alienation, Verfremdung, is a device that reminds the audience they are watching a performance, not a real event.

Ruscica's 'alienation effect' can also be interpreted differently, however. Thoughts about human cloning or tsunamis sweeping across Australia acquire entirely different weight when an artist includes them in a work of art. The thought acquires a face and becomes tangible. It does not matter that we see the work is not true. We can still truly experience it.

The people in Beginning an Ending are in search of a moment, a beginning that lays the foundation for the story. This creates a kind of personal memory that functions on the level of the individual just as do ideologies from the 'scientific worldview' to 'religion'. Personal mythology is like human identity: variable and shaky, yet we believe in it.

(abridged from the exhibition text by Juha-Heikki Tihinen)

Jani Ruscica's (b.1978) works are simultaneously on show at Photographic Gallery Hippolyte in Helsinki and the Studio gallery in Turku Art Museum. The pieces in Parallel Acts continue the themes of representation and theatricality Ruscica has addressed in his earlier work. The show focuses on depictions of the future to investigate the media and the representational methods that mould our ideas of future events. Ruscica has in the past few years exhibited his work widely both in Finland and abroad, most recently at TATE Modern in London, at Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm, and at Momentum Biennale in Moss, Norway. Last year Ruscica's video work Evolutions (2008) won a prestigious main prize at the KunstFilmBiennale in Cologne.

www.janiruscica.com

Jani Ruscica, Beginning an Ending, 2009 (photo: Sini Pelkki)

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