Tres blondes is a team that consists of artist Annika Dahlsten and photographer Milla Eräsaari, who turn observing into art. Tres blondes has studied themes such as structures of museums, officialese, and copyright issues. The works have grown into performances and various kinds of installations. Their works have been on display in Turku Art Museum and in Antwerp, Belgium, among other places.
The garden is thought to be a place of hiding from technological reality into genuine experience. Because of their organic nature, plants are regarded as the opposite of machinery. However, a garden follows a pattern of its own: In order to function according to our wishes, it must be taken into control. A garden encapsulates certain capacity and efficiency. A kitchen garden has to be fertile and productive, whereas a garden of flowers must be visually astonishing. City gardens are strictly controlled – an overgrown garden is a social disgrace.
In the tres blondes exhibition Puutarhan helmassa – ‘Out in the garden’, the reality and dreams of a garden bureaucrat meet. Tres blondes studies a regulated, taxonomically categorized garden in which the individual disappears into the depths of bureaucracy. Tres blondes analyzes memories and images awakened by the garden as well as the borders at which a cultivated garden meets the wild, wild world.
The photographs of the series Puutarhassa – ‘In the garden’ portray garden bureaucrats dreaming of a regulated paradise, where esthetic pleasures are experienced in permitted and decent circumstances. Kuokkavieras – ‘The gatecrasher’ features a bureaucrat overcome by anarchy in a formal garden. In the work Puutarha-ansa – ‘The garden trap’, tres blondes presents the collision of dream and reality in peephole boxes. Creating a place of dreams can even demand violence. The box makes the border between public and private visible: A regulated and controlled world meets an escapist, dream-like one.
The opening will be held Tuesday, May 27, at 6pm.–8pm. Welcome!
Additional info:
Annika Dahlsten, tel. +358 40 5171750, annikadahlsten(at)hotmail.com
Milla Eräsaari, tel. +358 50 5501509, millavauhkonen(at)yahoo.co.uk
The exhibition has been supported by Finnish Cultural Foundation, Uusimaa Regional fund.
