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Union > Artists > A-J |
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Veli Granö
b. 29.11.1960
Laivalahdenkaari 9 A 12
Fin 00810 Helsinki
Finland
tel. +358(0)400196966
E-mail
www.veligrano.info
CV Veli Granö
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Meet You in Finland Angel, 2003
Film, 35mm, DVD,
35min, Dolby stereo
Directed and photographed by Veli Granö
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Kirsti, 2003
Installation
2x DVD video loop,
7x colour photograph on
aluminium, furniture etc.
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Whirls of Energy, 2005
Installation about Juha Kiwano
Colour
photograph on aluminium,
100 x 130 cm, DVD video loop.
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Tangible Cosmologies, 1997, series of colour photographs about
collectors
"Timo Tuomivaara" 1996,
93 x 130cm |
Masters, 2000-2006
series about scale model devotees, colour
photograph on aluminium
"Kari Sarmanne" 2003,
88 x 100 cm |
Click the photo! |
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Veli Granö has become known to the Finnish public as a documentarist of collectors and folk artists. For him, this long project has not been just one of appearing in the context of the arts, within its institutional structures of galleries and museums. Instead, his efforts have resulted in documentary works of wider distribution, such as books and video works presented on television. Onnela, a book by Granö on folk artists appeared in 1989, followed in 1999 by a text version in English entitled A Trip to Paradise. He returned to this theme together with other photographers in Itse tehty elämä - ITE / DIY Lives (2000), an illustrated book published in connection with a major exhibition of folk art. Onnela and the ITE project launched research into folk art in Finland, and plans are under way for establishing a museum for this area of art. Esineiden valtakunta - Tangible Cosmologies, an illustrated work by Granö on collectors, including a CD-ROM, was published in 1997.
Granö's works Ihmeellinen viesti toiselta tähdeltä (A Strange Message from Another Star) and Tähteläiset (Meet You in Finland) continue these and similar themes, but now with a completely different focus. The overall themes, however, are the same: a certain alienation and the different worldviews that it produces. In his earlier works, Granö can be said to have concentrated on everyday life and the micro-level of things, on the world of objects and goods whereby people create or reinforce both their identity and their view of the world and assign meanings to them. It is a world lived in and experienced, a presence, that can be approached both historically and phenomenologically. Works of art and objects are physical items that are tangible and can be organized, as well as historical evidence, narratives in which an idiosyncratic biography and the psychology of the individual are crystallized through the recent past and the history of the nation and the world into a cluster of different forces. It is by no means be far-fetched to call the bear sculpture of a folk artist a totem or the treasure of a collection a talisman. In A Strange Message from Another Star and Star Dweller absence, or its possibility, replaces presence as the factor that creates meaningfulness - it is an awareness of a different kind of reality, a utopia, a desire to be elsewhere, the knowledge that "I do not belong here" or that "I belong somewhere else".
Quotation about Otso Kantokorpis article for the catalogue of Sydeny Biennale
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Union of Artist Photographers and Photographic Gallery Hippolyte
Kalevankatu 18 B 00100 Helsinki |
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