Flis Holland
Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari – Jätkä 2
3.–18.10.2015
Flis Holland builds installations from a minimum of materials, the pared-down simplicity belying a complex and challenging content. Scale models are photographed and displayed within viewing apparatus, both as a way to take the audience to places they have never been, and to question their current position within the gallery.
The starting point for the work is consideration of the verbalisation of trauma, the struggle to articulate an event to somebody who wasn’t there. The attempt to bring two different points of view, places and times into convergence is destined to fail. However, Holland’s work takes a step back and focuses on the desire rather than the outcome, and on the structure of the communication process.
For her show at Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari Holland has built and adapted a model of the Jätkä 2 space. At first glance it appears as if the temporary walls that delineate the exhibition areas have been removed, returning the gallery to its original state. A closer look reveals that this hall of pillars is itself a fabrication, the walls still present but bearing mirrors. The experience of the exhibition becomes less easy to pin down, with the presence of the viewer within it at once doubled and disappearing. This is further complicated by the inclusion of memorial markers to an external event, the facts of which are never more than obliquely alluded to.
Flis Holland is a doctoral student at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, and is supported by the Kone Foundation and Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
