Site-specific installation, 2020
Painting on canvas (295×300 cm), programmed light, shadow
The title is based on the Erebidae moth family, derived from the type genus Erebus, which means “from the darkness”.
With this installation I continue to explore the behaviour of shadows and their relation to our perception. A painted, unmoving image is placed under circumstances, in which it loses its appearance of stable material substance. What seemed like a static situation at first sight is changing – light permeates shade and shadows turn translucent. The work is actuated only in the physical presence of the viewer, and thus the visitor becomes an inherent part of the installation.
The installation exploits natural workings of light and shadows as transient phenomena. It relies on the interrelationship of colour, painted counter-shading and light that changes in looped cycles. However, it is important that the dynamics and causal relationships of the process at play are not readily readable to the viewer. Rather, the situation is an incessant happening, a slowed-down cycle of indivisible events and states, in which the greatest variable is the viewer’s own experience.
I think of the fragility and temporality of the situation as relating to the brief life of a night moth that lives in shadows and becomes visible to us only when attracted by an external light source.
Installation views and details, Joensuu Art Museum, Finland, 2020–21