HIPPOLYTE STUDIO
Kalevankatu 18 B, 00100 Helsinki
09 612 33 44, www.hippolyte.fi
Open: Tue–Fri 12–17, Sat–Sun 12–16

4.-27.2.2011
Maria Vuorinen
YOU DID NOT KNOW, DID YOU?

I believe that in order to create something which has the potentiality to touch other people, an artist has to touch her/himself first, go deep into her/himself and through all the personal layers find the core common to us all. It is in these timeless, placeless and nameless stories that viewers can recognize themselves, their own stories. And it is in these stories that I, the artist, can see some scenery from my own life: the places, the times and the persons that were apparently unable to accommodate my affection, loyalty, desire, commitment and love.

My work is mostly based on photography and video, on remote images of myself, often together with objects that have their origin in the body-related items appearing in the images, such as clothes, jewellery or gloves. Shooting the images with no assistance might not always produce the technically best result, but it can be seen as implying a certain honesty. The criterion for the images is recognition, the reflection between the outer and the inner images. Only in one of the images is there another person. Blindfolded she is unaware of the situation, of the object placed next to her heart. It is only through this finished image that she, just as all other spectators, is first allowed to see.

These installations/images/objects often give a sense of gradual (dis)appearance: the past is present through the images and the labor invested in the objects. The gloves and the dresses are stripped off and transformed into new objects that hold a strong sense of both absence and waiting.

By each image I appear and by each object I will disappear.

Maria Vuorinen earned her MFA from the Konstfack, Stockholm, in 2006. She currently lives and works in Finland as an independent artist, moving between the art of jewellery and photography. Vuorinen has also studied in Scotland (BDes(Hons), 2003 / University of Dundee) and in Finland (Designer (AMK), 2002 / Turku University of Applied Sciences).

Information and press images:
Hippolyte Studio, +358 9 612 33 44, info[at]hippolyte.fi

(c) Maria Vuorinen