Laura Vainikka
BLACKOUT
Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari, Jätkä 2
18 November – 3 December 2017
“Cutie,” he said, “I’m going to try to explain something to you. You’re the first robot who’s ever exhibited curiosity as to his own existence – and I think the first that’s really intelligent enough to understand the world outside. Here, come with me.”
The robot rose erect smoothly and his thickly sponge-rubber soled feet made no noise as he followed Powell. The Earthman touched a button and a square section of the wall flickered aside. The thick, clear glass revealed space – star-speckled.
“I’ve seen that in the observation ports in the engine room,” said Cutie.
“I know,” said Powell. “What do you think it is?”
“Exactly what it seems – a black material just beyond this glass that is spotted with little gleaming dots. I know that our director sends out beams to some of these dots, always to the same ones – and also that these dots shift and that the beams shift with them. That is all.”
Isaac Asimov: Reason (1941)
I have printed large dark surfaces on paper, oily layers of color piling up on top of each other. I have polished metal sheets to resemble mirrors, aiming to catch reflections of the reality arching over us. I have printed again paper burnt to a pile of ashes, letting it become visible in another order. I have taken a black soot mark as a sign of light.
I have cleared, filled, broken and combined surfaces and materials that react to light in different ways. I don’t know which one of them shows the most to a viewer and which one the least.
While working on the pieces for the exhibition, I was wondering if one could look at the world like the robot in the short story quoted above, thinking that everything is only exactly what it seems. The sky as black matter, stars as glowing dots receiving beams of light. Could one think that is all?
Laura Vainikka (b. 1979, Lappeenranta) is a visual artist and printmaker who lives and works in the Helsinki region. Vainikka works mainly with art which develops into spatial entities, examining those boundary conditions that light, image and observation may require. Vainikka earned her Master of Fine Arts degree at the Academy of Fine Arts (University of the Arts Helsinki) in 2013. Her works are included, for example, in the collections of the Pori and Jyväskylä art museums and the Finnish State Art Collection. In 2017 Vainikka was nominated for the Kjell Nupen Memorial Grant.
Laura Vainikka
+358 44 322 3303
lauvai(at)yahoo.com
www.lauravainikka.wordpress.com
