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2002 / 2015 / MIR11
Created in 2002 /
Published in 2015 /
No. MIR11
MIR11
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Like a Breath in Light
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About Marja PiriläAbout the Work Marja Pirilä’s atmospheric series “Like a Breath in Light” casts a spell on the viewer. The images present Finland’s lake Nässijärvi in the many moods of natural light. They can be seen as emotional landscapes,…BACKGROUND INFORMATION
About the Work
Marja Pirilä’s atmospheric series “Like a Breath in Light” casts a spell on the viewer. The images present Finland’s lake Nässijärvi in the many moods of natural light. They can be seen as emotional landscapes, whose essence evokes memories of Caspar David Friedrich and the romantic idea that nature presents a mirror to the soul.
Clouds, water, and endless expanse – everything seems to blend, almost dissolve, into one another. The topographic features of the landscape recede and the image space is flooded with a light that shines, depending on the time of day, in glowing red, warm honey yellow or melancholy blue-violet. These emotionally-charged photographs, captured by the artist using a self-made pinhole camera, appear almost as abstract paintings. The monochrome aesthetic and the use of light as a distinct artistic tool lead to parallels with the Colour Field Painting of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman.
Despite their art-historical allusions, Pirilä’s works are deeply personal. As we gaze upon the landscapes, we are invited to project our own interpretations, and to follow their mood in a meditative trance.
About the Artist
Finnish artist Marja Pirilä gained international recognition for her diverse use of the camera obscura, a tool she has applied to a range of different projects since the 1990s. The theme of her work is always light, whose multi-faceted forms and effects she explores artistically. Her influences include the oeuvre of Cuban photographer Abelardo Morell, who turns darkened rooms into cameras obscura – an approach Pirilä adopts and expands to the concept of mental landscapes in her series “Interior/Exterior”. To Pirilä, working with light also means working with the influence of light on people, on their emotions and their dreams.
Technique
Pirilä’s oeuvre is dedicated to the camera obscura and its miniature form - the pinhole camera. The artist explores the possibilities of the medium in her works, focusing her attention not only on the images she creates, but also on the construction of these viewing machines. Together with photographer Petri Nuutinen, Pirilä has built numerous cameras obscura, which can be found on display in both museums and public spaces.
The principles of optics, recognized since antiquity, served as an aid to the renaissance painters who sought to portray perspective. In 1826, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce produced the world’s very first photograph with the help of a camera obscura. As a metaphor for vision, this historical medium has lost none of its relevance, even in contemporary art. It allows artists to explore and experiment with human perception itself. Not least, this gentle, slowed-down method of image production serves as a counterbalance to the instant photography of the digital age.
Daniela KummleVITA
1957 Born in Rovaniemi, Finland Studied at the University of Helsinki and the University of Arts and Design, Helsinki, Finland Lives and works in Tampere, Finland Exhibitions
Solo Exhibitions
2015 Marja Pirilä. Carried by Light, Almlof Gallery, Malmö, Sweden 2014 Carried by Light, TR1 Kunsthalle, Tampere, Finland 2013 Milavida, Gallery Katve, Artikum, Rovaniemi, Finland 2013 Interior/Exterior, Nordic Light Festival, Norway 2012 Herbarium, Gallery Ibis, Vaasa, Finland 2011 Speaking House & Interior/Exterior, Gallery La Chambre Claire, Rennes, France 2010 I am, Gallery Heino, Helsinki, Finland 2007 Speaking Light, National Centre of Photography, St. Petersburg, Russia 2005 Interior/Exterior, Finnish Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia 2002 Interior/Exterior, Turku Art Museum, Turku, Finland 2001 Interior/Exterior, Studio Marangoni, Florence, Italy Group Exhibitions
2015 Within/Without, C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, USA 2014 Nature and More, Kunsthalle Rostock, Rostock, Germany 2014 Poetics and Light, New Mexico History Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA 2013 Photography into Art: Hannula & Hinkka Collection, Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, Finland 2012 Mazzano! – 20 Years for Art, Museum of Estonian Architecture, Tallinn, Estonia 2011 Bodies, Borders, Crossings, Governors Island, New York City, USA 2011 5. Triennale der Photographie, Hamburg, Germany 2009 (De)konstruktionen, Fotogalerie Wien, Vienna, Austria 2007 Mapping the Unknown, Overbeck Gesellschaft, Lübeck, Germany 2005 To Look or to See, Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, Finland 2004 Facing East, Bournemouth Photography Festival, Bournemouth, UK 2004 Contemporary Finnish Photography, House of Photography, Prague, Czech Republic 2003 Photography & Video Art from Finland, Center of Photography, St. Petersburg, Russia 2001 Time in Mazzano, Kunsthalle Helsinki, Finland 1999 Light, Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, Finland