Maria Pääkkönen
Revisiting Unknown Places
13 – 28 February 2016
Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari – Jätkä 2
I don’t remember where the place is. I’m not sure if it really exists or if I have seen it in a dream or movie, perhaps it was my imagination. I don’t exactly remember when I was there. I was a child and it was a long time ago. I don’t remember how I got there or how I came back. I remember what it looked like and what it felt like to be there. I remember the tall spruces on the edge of the clearing. I remember the boulders rising up towards the sky. I remember the silence. It was perhaps autumn or early spring, a still and cloudy day. The sky was bright and white. I remember what the earth smelled like. I remember, I don’t remember. The edges of the image have faded, like an overexposed film. It has always been like that. I question my memory.
When drawing at my studio, I end up thinking about the place. I draw for hours. I listen to the monotonous rhythm of the pencil and stare into the grayness slowly taking shape in front of me. I see, I don’t see.
A dirty tarp is hanging from a tree branch. I feel a desire to touch the fabric. I put down the pencil and I touch the fabric lightly with my fingers. It’s just graphite on the smooth surface of the paper, dirt on my fingertips, a dark silvery hole through which I try to peer at the disappearing landscape. The door closes. For a moment I am sure that I didn’t imagine it. For a moment I am sure that I really do remember.
Maria Pääkkönen (b. 1988) is a Helsinki-based visual artist whose slowly created, process-like works examine the fine line between a physical and mental state as well as observation and memory.
The exhibition has been supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
www.mariapaakkonen.com
mariapkknen(at)gmail.com
+358 44 302 9560
