PHOTOGRAPHIC GALLERY HIPPOLYTE
Kalevankatu 18 B, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
+358 9 612 33 44, www.hippolyte.fi

Ea Vasko
RADIANT NIGHT
- Works from the series Defining Darkness
15th of August 2008 – 7th of September 2008
Open: Tue-Fri 12:00-17:00, Sat-Sun 12:00-16:00. (On The Night of the Arts on Friday 22.8. 12:00-22:00.)

The works in Ea Vasko's Radiant Night examine urban environments. A city space is alluring because of its motion and changeability; it is vast and multiform, but very difficult to perceive. As a space, a city is not absolutely definable. Instead, its character depends on individual experience. Vasko aims to present the general character of urban space in her artwork, while specific locations are diffused from the picture. The act of recognition is thus omitted from the experience of looking, and the art work moves closer to representations of general urban space. Photographs are often read as documents - Vasko questions this tendency by means of abstraction. She hopes that viewers will ease their thoughts away from recognition, and focus instead on spatial experiences. When a specific place is not obviously identifiable, viewers can interpret the photographs with more freedom.

The Defining Darkness series deals with the nocturnal character of urban settings, as well as the uncertainty related to darkness and limited vision. Cityscapes turn into something completely different by nightfall. This is achieved by small, single artificial lights, and the shapes created by them. Shapes and form are also different in darkness because they must be determined, where as by daylight they are knowable detailed facts. We become unsure in darkness, because 80 per cent of our perceptions depend on our sense of vision.

Seeing as a function is an important point of departure for this series: How many or how few recognizable elements does our brain need in order to form a complete visual perception? An abstracted photograph rarely stays on the level of abstraction, because one always attempts to find references to reality and the location where the picture was taken. During the experience of looking, an abstract photograph changes from an abstraction into something else - from a detail into a landscape, from the meaningless into the meaningful, from abstract into representational, from surface into space.

Besides actual city environments, Vasko has built miniature scale models for some photographs. With the models, Vasko has been better able to investigate the properties of space and light, and control all the factors of the locations herself. Photographing miniature models also makes it possible to play with scale size and create anonymous spaces. Some of the models are actually very small, but they seem large and unreal in the photographs.

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Ea Vasko's (born 1980) artwork focuses on questions concerning seeing and perception. Her photography is often abstract - her intention is that viewers can determine the visual contents of her pictures for themselves. Vasko investigates looking as an action, and how looking can be influenced through pictures. Ea Vasko lives and works in Helsinki.

Ea Vasko: City / Disorder IX, from series Defining Darkness, 2008

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