Hannu Karjalainen: Young Artist of the Year 2009

duration: 01.Mai - 20.June 2009

opening: 30.April 2009 / 7 p.m.

Venue and opening hours:
Wed-Sat 12-6 p.m. and upon request

Gallery TaiK
Bergstr. 22
10115 Berlin-Mitte


Hannu Karjalainen has been chosen this year in Finland as the artist of the year. His works circle between video, photography and performance. Karjalainen is part of the famous Helsinki School, whose artists in general aim to redefine the boundaries between the genres. In his videos and photographs he deals with the meaning of certain colors and with aspects of the portrait.

In the exhibition Karjalainen´s latest video installation Blackpool Pleasure Beach (2009) will be presented. On a grid of 66 squares painted on the wall with 11 colors picked from low budget airline companies (e.g. Easy Jet) Karjalainen projects a seascape video shot in Blackpool, the popular tourist spot in Great Britain. The installation is a constantly changing exploration of color - how it changes our perception of what we are looking at and what connotations it can have. Furthermore Karjalainen creates a contemporary motif of transience: low budget airlines that bring tourists to the beaches and who threaten at the same time the existence of these places because of the rising sea level.

Besides that Gallery TaiK is presenting Karjalainen´s large format portraits. Unlike a portrait photographer in a classical sense, he is not interested in giving insight into the mind of the people he photographs. Rather he examines the relationship between painted and photographed portrait while steeping the clothes of the portrayed into paint and from then on fixing them on photographic paper. Karjalainen alludes here the paradigm shift of the nineteenth century when artists using paint as their material were superseded by technical innovation, and portraits were from then on fixed on photographic paper. As a consequence painting and photography overlap, taking on an added sculptural quality from the gleaming wet clothing.