MINNA PÖLLÄNEN
NATURE TRAIL
Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari 1
29.5 – 15.6.2014
On Ascension Day (thursday 29.5.) galleries are open 12-17, welcome!
Landscape is an exhausted medium, no longer viable as a mode of artistic expression.
Like life landscape is boring; we must not say so.
W.J.T. Mitchell: Landscape and Power
Visual artist Minna Pöllänen’s (b.1980) practice combines and moves between photography and site-specific projects. Her thematic focus is on the notion of landscape and on the stereotypes and structures surrounding different environments.
Nature Trail (2012-2014), a new body of photographic work shown in Gallery Huuto, explores and questions the ways in which landscapes are experienced and perceived through a set of site-specific interventions in a forest. Made from scraps of industrially processed wood and some basic tools, Pöllänen’s constructions mimic the visual language associated with landscape tourism such as viewing platforms, signposts and ways of marking and building trails and paths.
In the photographs landscape itself is shown in a limited manner. Rather than taking the form of a sublime vista, the photographed scenery acts as a backdrop for the interventions, and the focus of the images is on the seemingly trivial details of the terrain. By steering away from a direct representation of landscape the work concentrates on the anatomy of experiencing and commodifying the environment: What defines an ideal landscape and the right viewpoint to it? What is the role of the spectator in valuing the environment? And could the very mundanity of a landscape offer a way into a more constructive and thoughtful method for perceiving one’s own surroundings?
Minna Pöllänen is a Finnish artist living and working in Helsinki and London. Her works have been shown in Finland and abroad including: Mänttä Art Festival in Mänttä (2013), Yinka Shonibare Guest Projects (2014) and The Photographers’ Gallery (2012) in London, Brooklyn Bridge Park and A.I.R. Gallery in New York (2013), YOUNG ARTISTS 2011 at Helsinki Kunsthalle, Format Photography Festival in Derby (2013) and Galerie Les Territoires in Montreal (2012, 2011).
Thank you: Arts Promotion Centre Finland/National Council for Photographic Art and Kone Foundation
For more information: www.minnapollanen.com / minna(at)minnapollanen.com
