Heli Kaskinen
Meanwhile On The Other Side
Photographic Gallery Hippolyte
1.11.2019 – 24.11.2019
_
Heli Kaskinen’s exhibition Meanwhile, On The Other Side is a humorous attempt of photographs and art-objects to make a claim and to give a peek into the other side of walls, borders and presumably neglected surfaces. The exhibition offers alternative perspectives and new interpretations of the ideas and events behind the photograph.
The works displayed at Photographic Gallery Hippolyte focus on themes of viewing, perception, and interpretation through various fades, turns, and transitions. On the other side of the surface, phenomena and human emotions appear in the works as a grave and yet playful combinations of images and words. The idea of turning is what guides Kaskinen’s work. In the Finnish language, you can turn a jacket, a pocket, a back or a side, but also an eye, or a mind. At the same time, to turn is also to translate words into Finnish—kääntää—you turn a language by turning it into another. Hreinn Fridfinnsson, an Icelandic conceptual artist, turned the inside of an entire house outward in his House Project (1974), while similarly, Kaskinen lays bare the plexus of everyday life with the use of reclaimed vintage frames and photography found across Europe.
The stories in Kaskinen’s works are reinterpreted extracts from lived life. Kaskinen’s work is complete once pieces of her soul are added—dusting it with childhood memories, wrapped in the traumatic glory of her teenaged-years and adulthood’s ceaseless pragmatism. Meanwhile, On The Other Side flips the viewpoint. Kaskinen delivers pithy remarks about our most absurd and perplexing experience—life itself.
_
Heli Kaskinen is a multidisciplinary visual artist who works mainly in photography. In her work, she uses expressions of both photographic and conceptual art. Her works are based on everyday life and often deal comically with real experiences.