SUPERVISION
Laura Ferrara, Susanna Flock, Leonhard Müllner & Mari Mäkiö
Gallery Huuto Jätkäsaari 2
1.6–16.6.2013
Observation, perception and surveillance became the starting point for five diverse and broad artistic investigations which will be on display at Gallery Huuto from June 1 to June 16, 2013. The exhibition titled Supervision by Laura Ferrara, Susanna Flock, Leonhard Müllner and Mari Mäkiö brings together works of art which are connected to the field of observation. The exhibition will investigate the visual patterns and representations in the artworks. Although the presented works differ in their content and their formal aspects, they intertwine namely through their conceptual direction, investigating strategies of surveillance. The artists pick up where the institutionalized traditional measurements leave off. The works observe, check, record and categorize the collected facts as the artistic interventions are dissected, inverted and sometimes concealed. Surveillance tactics and strategies are hereby de-contextualized and reused within an artistic framework.
In her installation and book, Andrew Kehoe Wasn‘t Wearing a Trench Coat, Laura Ferrara compiles crime photos from different eras. Pictures and sobering documents from crime scenes are presented next to distressing photographs of victims taken by the mass media, images which have been recorded in our collective memory. The black and white reproductions have been cropped, written and painted on. Ferrara’s other work, Eyewitness, consists of a portrait of the artist composed from biometric facial recognition images used by state authorities. For this artwork, photographic fragments from police photographs taken of five women were selected from the Zurich police department’s archived image catalogue.
Susanna Flock’s artwork Search term: real people, criminal of posters with search terms and the indexing of stock photographs. The work asks for the visual counterparts of criminal offenders in the media. The actual photos are retained, interrogating the viewer’s own stereotypes of suspected criminals. A strategy of negation is present in these artworks of Susanna Flock and Laura Ferrara. In all three works, the viewers are redirected and mislead, creating a sense that codes and patterns of meaning have been dismantled.
The search for indications also deals with questions of interpretation. A similar inquiry takes place when viewing the installation A Life by Mari Mäkiö. Mäkiö’s work consists of found photographs, leftovers from a person’s life, turned into a reflection of the past and the almost forgotten. The artworks consist of a sound and text work, produced in collaboration with professionals of various fields, and a portrait which is composed of all the existing images of the unknown owner of the found photograph albums. These photographs are hereby not used as evidence but provide an indication that something has happened and open up the possibilities for new narratives.
Leonhard Müllner’s video work, Halosis, a choreography which is taken from an established visual vocabulary of supervision tactics performed by a plain-clothes police officer from a special unit. The camera alternates between a hidden view and being very close to the protagonist, and then swiftly directs the eye of the viewer to the emptiness of a hallway, thereby echoing the viewer’s tensions. Halosis reverses methods of observation and strategies used by authorities, bringing contrasts and opposites to light. An isolated subject, empty vastness. Hunting – or being hunted?
Additional info: Mari Mäkiö: mari.makio(at)gmail.com, 040 733 6120
