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| REPRESENTED ARTISTS | BERTILLE BAK | GWENAEL BELANGER | DEXTER DYMOKE | ANTTI LAITINEN | |
| MARKO MAETAMM | YUDI NOOR | OLIVER PIETSCH | KIM RUGG | ||
| BETTINA SAMSON | SINTA WERNER | ||||
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ANTTI
LAITINEN
It's My Island
30 MAY – 29 JUNE
VIEW
WORK
NETTIE HORN is pleased
to present It’s My Island, a solo exhibition by Finnish
artist Antti Laitinen; featuring a selection of videos, photographs
and an installation.
In his latest body of work, It’s My Island (2007), Laitinen
builds his own island in the Baltic Sea by dragging two hundred sand
bags into the water over a period of three months - using nothing but
a spade, sand and sacks. Individually filling each of the bags with
sand, the three simultaneous videos go on to show Laitinen painstakingly
dragging each bag, one by one, into the sea, braving the harsh waves
and conditions, until the island starts to appear over the water.
In this repetitive and idiosyncratically absurd performance, Laitinen explores notions of nationality - building his own independent micro-nation inhabited by a single citizen - and questions fundamental issues of citizenship and identity. When the island is built, Laitinen then carefully documents it in a series of large-scale photographs which are noble representations of the beautiful and romantic landscape which is so present in Laitinen’s work. Each photograph revealing different aspects of nature’s emotional influence on the landscape – from a calm and idyllic setting to a foreboding stormy seascape.
Many of
Laitinen’s works
deal directly with fundamental issues of Finnish identity and cultural
imagery - they are pictures of masculinity set in a context of nature
and culture. And yet, Laitinen is not just a humorist playing around
with cultural meanings - his work attests to the presence and attitude
of an author who is aware of the tradition of experimental performance
art. Often we see Laitinen pushing the boundaries of his physical
endurance and comfort in order to engage with the world and thus creating
a dialogue between the artist’s exploration of his own identity
and the wilderness.
In Laitinen’s case, the term work needs be defined with care.
Many of his works are actually composed of various stages in the
process of its making, when he moves from one medium and semantic
context to the next. The switch produces a new, independent work,
which then becomes part of the overall piece and thus incorporating
different temporal stages.
It's My Island VI, 2007, Diasec mounted C-Type print, 115 x 115 cm
In Finland, performance art consolidated its position as an independent art form in the 1980s. Antti Laitinen (b. 1975) belongs to a new generation of authors whose work reappraises the heroic ethos and underlying notions of the artist in performance art. Laitinen’s idiosyncratic approach lends a new perspective as well as a universal dimension of humour to his performances, a humour that arises from a meeting between impossible and incommensurate elements.
Antti Laitinen graduated with an MA from the Helsinki Art Academy in 2004. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Arts, Gateshead, UK; Exprmntl galerie, Toulouse, France; and Scope New York represented by NETTIE HORN. Group exhibitions include La position de la Terre, The Rhinelander Contemporary Art Center, France; Beauhemia, NETTIE HORN, London, UK; The Faraway Nearby, White Box, New York, USA; Male Stuff, Peri, Turku, Finland and Gallery Signe Vad, Copenhagen, Denmark; 4th Triennal of Finnish Art, Kunsthalle, Helsinki, Finland; Nordisk Panorama (18th Nordic Short & Documentary Film Festival), Oulu, Finland; What is Live Art in Finnish? Muu galleria, Helsinki, Finland and upcoming exhibitions at Gallery Emil Filla, Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic and Kerava Art Museum, Finland.
© NETTIE HORN