“EREBIDAE / FROM THE DARKNESS” – installation for Joensuun Taidemuseo
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 alive – something has changed, 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 integral part of the artwork by his/her effect on the image.
The installation exploits natural workings of light and shadows as transient phenomena. It relies on the interrelationship of colour, painted counter-shading and programmed 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 synonymous 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.
View from exhibition Fleeting Existence, Joensuu Art Museum, Finland
(programmed LED light, painting and shadow)
