Elina Vainio’s exhibition Earth from above is an installation that consists of advertisement pictures and a sound loop. It reminds us of the conflict characteristic of our time: real-time information on the entire world’s events sometimes makes us lose perspective.
The name of the exhibition refers to the iconic photograph created as a by-product of the first spaceflight – the moment when the thought that had been developing in people’s imagination for centuries was recorded on film. It also reminds us of our satellite eyes, going around in space and giving us an opportunity to virtually zoom ourselves outside the atmosphere and back to the street corner. Science is constantly developing and the information about our globe is versatile and can be updated in real time. However, the world that we see in advertisements and on the pages of magazines remains under control and unchanged, serving its purpose. The same images remain in people’s minds.
The core of the exhibition is the Planet Earth Advertisements series for which Vainio has collected pictures from Finnish and international magazines and posters over the past four years. The common denominator of the pictures is the perspective that has remained unchanged for decades, the perspective that Commander Eugene Cernan encapsulated in 1972 when Apollo 17 landed on the Moon: “We’re not the first to discover this, but we’d like to confirm, from the crew of Apollo 17, that the world is round.” Advertisements still show the earth as a small blue and green ball glowing in the dark, viewed from space. The images reflected in the form of the earth are reproduced in the pictures over and over again, advertising a variety of different companies, products and services. The reason why that perspective is so common in western marketing campaigns is that the earth offers a recognizable image of a mutual and understandable world, whether it is a question of specialization in university studies, the largest gumballs or an international courier service.
Elina Vainio’s (b. 1981) works are often series or spacial installations that observe reality as a structure under various influences. In addition to her own artistic work, she has taken part in a number of situation and place related projects in Finland and abroad as a member of the international Transidency collective. Vainio graduated from Chelsea College of Art & Design in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in fine art. She is currently doing master’s studies in the Department of Time and Space at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. The exhibition at Gallery Huuto is her first solo exhibition.
The exhibition has been supported by the Oskar Öflund foundation and Genelec.
For more information: Elina Vainio / 040-7787768 / elinvainio(at)gmail.com / www.elinavainio.com / www.transidency.org
