Anna Hyrkkänen Light Transitions
Anna Hyrkkänen often creates her works by studying light in different spaces and materials. Her practice is guided by an aspiration to understand the behavior of matter. Seeing light as matter is both a concrete and an interpretative part of the works.
In the core of Hyrkkänen’s new works is the human as a biological being, and the human mind’s ability to transcend the limitations of time and materiality; the non-simultaneity of the inner and outer worlds. The distance between concrete and abstract disappears in works that utilize different imaging techniques. A coronary angiogram and a CT scan reveal the stacking of different realities; our body continues living in the present moment even while our minds wander through immeasurable periods of time, for instance to the beginning of the Universe. A scientifically precise reproduction of something that is near to us, or even inside our body, becomes strange and unfamiliar to its carrier.
Hyrkkänen’s works explore the human as a being that has both a body and a mind, as an organism that is resiliently connected with materiality and time. Her starting point is at the same time anthropocentric and posthuman: she views the human like any organism that functions in accordance to the laws of physics.
The exhibition brings scientific material into the sphere of art. It produces visual entities that create ambiguous domains crossing the boundaries between science and art.
Anna Hyrkkänen (b. 1979) lives and works in Tampere, Finland. She graduated in 2010 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki where she studied sculpture. Hyrkkänen mostly works with sculpture, and spatial and light installations.
The exhibition is supported by Kone Foundation and Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
Thank you for collaboration: Lapland Central Hospital / Magnus Hagnäs and Sakari Säkö
Events during the exhibition:
Anna Hyrkkänen will be present at the exhibition on Sunday, May 5 2019 between 2–4pm, and on Sunday, May 19 2019 between 2–4pm, together with Jan Lütjohann, whose exhibition Time and Other Resources is on view at Gallery Sculptor’s studio space.