This year, for the first time, Lux Helsinki includes an indoor exhibition of light art. Lux IN presents almost twenty works of art, ranging from industrial minimalism to video installations. With the indoor venue of Merikaapelihalli, it is possible to explore an even greater diversity of artworks.
Exhibited will be new and previously seen light artworks by well-known artists and also installations from the Light as Visual Art course, created by lighting design students at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. At the Lux Lounge in the middle of the exhibition space you can relax with a refreshment while watching documentary videos on recent light art history. In collaboration with the Cable Factory.
Address: Tallberginkatu 1. The venue can be reached by tram no. 8, buses no. 20, 21V, 65A and 66A, and the metro (Ruoholahti).
Images:
Upper picture Noisescape by Teemu Määttänen
Lower picture Medicine City by Antti Pussinen & Martta-Kaisa Virta
On the right Hyperpeili by Brainwave Music LAB
Performance time: Daily from 2 pm to 10 pm
Entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, is a measure of a system’s tendency towards spontaneous change. Entropy describes the process of increasing of disorder in the universe. All systems tend to progress in the direction of increasing entropy; differences between states and entities gradually disappear. Entropy also suggests an arrow of time: the process of entropy is irreversible.
Terike Haapoja represented Finland in the 55th Art Exhibition la Biennale di Venezia in Venice, Italy in 2013.
The light installation is inspired by the aesthetics of early pocket calculators and digital watches. Dozens of fluorescent tubes create angular words written by Canadian poet and author Daniel Canty. The installation also incorporates sound.
Brainwave Music LAB develops interactive applications and environments that react to brainwaves and other biophysical processes. These bio responses reach the domain of sensory perception as audiovisual material with the help of digital media. The installation is supported by Kone Foundation.
In this video montage, the lights of different cities intertwine to form a single growing network of lights on the planet. On the northern fringe of this network, in the light of an electric bulb, a group of Finns contemplate the concept of “world of light” and their individual relationships to it.
“The amount of light in the world is equal to the ability of a man to generate it. There will be more light tomorrow than there is today, whether I want it or not. Then the only possibility that is left will be to get out of the light.”
“Fear is one of the central issues associated with darkness. Man needs a lot of artificial light to keep the fear at bay.”
Rest is a moment’s respite from everyday tempests;
the glowing remains of the day on a fisherman’s palm;
a letter to Caliban;
a lit island on which to lay one’s head.
In collaboration with Gallery Kandela.
The Indian Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, the Baltic Sea. In this work, a mass of rippling images meets a rippling surface, and a hand-drawn line meets programmed computer graphics. Exalting the beauty of waves, the piece consists of 78 plywood boards with projected images. Noisescape was specially designed for Lux Helsinki. The installation is supported by the Centre for Practice as Research in Theatre at the University of Tampere.
The Red Horizon investigates the way in which we see light, space and colour. There is a red light behind a hung frame, dispersed by a stretched film into the shape of a horizon and forming a light landscape stretching to infinity. A monochromatic blue light blends the background into the distance while emphasising the closeness and presence of the red horizon.
A big, illuminated installation surprises the viewer. At first it seems like a beautiful and a mesmerizing night time cityscape: realizing the material of the buildings takes the themes of the artwork into deeper levels. Medicine City is made of tens of thousands used and empty medicine aluminium packages.
The artwork is about medicalization of our society. It is also about how cities can be seen as a medicine for loneliness and light as a medicine against fear.
This work makes viewers feel that they are in a moving space – as if they were on a train going through a tunnel. In the functional sculpture, light passes through several circular forms, making moving shadows on the walls and ceiling. The speed of the lights changes at each pass, from dizzyingly fast to calmer and more hypnotic.
The installation is a partial reconstruction of a triptych exhibited at the Retretti Art Centre in 1995. The original installation was ruined during the exhibition due to moisture problems at the art centre.
In this work, the viewer submits voluntarily to a shocking experience. Moving our own shadows, we may see the different forms they take independent of us. Later, our shadows become filled with a new substance.
The work seeks to affect people in a manner similar to music. Viewers are placed in a position where their backs – their unprotected sides – are against objects. Being aware that the objects will soon come to life, they can feel events in both their mind and their body. The contact with the physical person who causes these events is indirect, but the reactions to the events are genuine.
The work describes the stages of a human turning into ice.
This piece forms a part of a series in which Ervasti works with mirrors and light reflections. The light forms reflected onto the wall through mirrors create immaterial illusions of space and changing compositions of colour.
A loupe is a tool for viewing – a magnifying glass used, for example, by photographers. A mirrored reflection creates a kaleidoscope-like vision of another reality.
Students of Lighting Design at the University of the Arts Helsinki
Installations from the course Light as Fine Art
The installation of Verho, who works on the interfaces of popular culture and high culture, examines the inequality between the interior and the exterior – and between the memory and the record.
Phototropism
1. the growth response of plant parts to the stimulus of light, producing a bending towards the light source
2. the response of animals to light: sometimes used as another word for phototaxis
Study of the world is not only for creating metaphors but for understanding its materiality.
"This work is one phase in my process of studying the relation between artificial light and life in our society. I study the biological, sociological, economical and psychological connections that deal with our fatal love for controlling the divine light to shine for 24 hours a day and the hopeful quest for never-ending energy resources."
Have you ever noticed the thousands of blood vessels that intersect on your retinas? Look closely. There they are. You have only forgotten them. Enimmäkseen hyvä näkyvyys fumbles towards the limits of the eyesight. The installation sits down to the edge of the field of vision and peeps over the edge.
You can't see yourself in the landscape.
Suojaväri/Camouflage is sculpture of disappearing, of reflections or of eternal glow. The surface is the border between human and the world, the most visible form of the human being. However it is just a reflection of its environment, a twinkle in the eye or a move of the light on the skin.
Because of its politics, Russia has been in the headlines worldwide already for a long time. Eurasianists are against the westernization of Russia and its influences. Protesters and sexual minorities have lately faced a lot of opposition from the Russian administration. The installation is an objection towards the ideology of the Russian politics.
In between the blues is an installation about colours that can be seen between the two blues, the sea and the sky. In this space a vast amount of colours confront each other for 24 hours a day.
Five remote places on the earth where these two blues confront in extremely different environments are chosen for the installation. In the installation these confrontations are projected as colour light. The rhythm of the installation is defined by the solar cycle occurring in the chosen places at this time of the year. One solar cycle is scaled to five minutes.
The five chosen places are Svalbard, Norway; Korppoo, Finland; Santiago, Cape Verde; Tasmania, Australia and Antarctica.
Partners
In collaboration with
