HIPPOLYTE STUDIO
Kalevankatu 18 B, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
+358 9 612 33 44, www.hippolyte.fi/studio
Open: Tue-Fri 12:00-17:00, Sat-Sun 12:00-16:00Kari Pyykönen
Aide-mémoire
2.5.–24.5. 2009
On Pictures and Shadow Images
Sometimes you can make pictures just of fun, without any strategy, theme or aim. By the same token, you can look at pictures without trying to see a plot, letting yourself be lost in the clues. Which one is then the sadder, the man or the dog? Something seems to have spilled over on both, and both have inclined their head, as if expecting an answer. The raven, however, walks in a circle. Is it contemplating its own existence – like contemporary photography?
Now the questions start to come: What is the horse doing up there? Who ate the dragonfly? And what's inside the black and the red book? No answer. The more I try, the more difficult it is to understand what this is all about. Better to concentrate on marvelling how the picture and the shadow image play with each other, now blending, now becoming detached again. In fact, it would be a mistake to separate the two. The French poet Jean Cocteau reminds us of this illusion of reality that we so often fall prey to: "People separate mystery from reality. But reality is a mystery (there is no reality). Those who know this are poets, or are able to understand poets." For Cocteau, poetry was what makes the invisible visible, it is the "lie that always tells the truth."[1]
When the lies of poetry tell the truth, something may simply be revealed in its beauty, as when water pretends to be turquoise or familiar objects decide to become a still life. Sometimes a chair may politely ask you to sit down and play chess with nothing but pawns. And that is the most exciting way to play chess. When things let go of the habits associated with them and find their natural place, the day brightens. Have a sunny spring!
Marjaana Kella
P.S. Sometimes a picture may hatch out of another picture, as when dreams become stories. Moreover, you can have the image framed and hung on the wall – as in this case. And lo and behold: the letters make up a new image!
As to this metamorphosed dream image, we must admit that the reported injuries are seldom so bad that one would become totally paralysed. For the most part, such fears prove to be just as unfounded as when a mask hanging on the wall in a dark corridor made a child to cry from sheer shock. Was it really just an image? Or should we say instead: "It truly was an Image." And who was the one who dreamt it? The darkest thing ultimately resides in light.
[1] Jean Cocteau, Le Passé défini I, Paris: Gallimard, 1983, 11.
Kari Pyykönen studied photography at the University of Art and Design Helsinki and graduated with a Master's degree in 1992. His debut exhibition was in Photographic Gallery Hippolyte in 1990, and he has been working as an artist photographer ever since. Kari Pyykönen is currently employed as lecturer and head of the photography degree programme in the School of Visual Culture at the University of Art and Design Helsinki.
(c) Kari Pyykönen
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More information:
Marja Kosunen, Hippolyte Studio, +358 9 612 33 44, info[at]hippolyte.fi
