What's up! trouvaillesdujour: January 2014

Friday, January 17, 2014

Eyes as Big as Plates, the "sublime elsewheres".

Eyes as Big as Plates is the collaborative venture between Karoline Hjorth (Norway) and Riitta Ikonen (Finland), produced in collaboration with senior models from Norway, Finland, New York, France and most recently Iceland and Faroe Islands. The series includes 45 works in total, along with a performance program and a selection of video pieces. Eyes as Big as Plates will be widely exhibited in 2014, starting with a solo show in January in Fotogalleriet in Norway followed by the Ars Fennica show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Finland.

Eyes as Big as Plates was produced with local seniors, sailors, retired agronomes and 90-year old parachuters. The photographic series started out as a play on characters and protagonists from Nordic folklore, inspired by the Romantics' celebration of imagination. Each image presents a solitary figure in a landscape, dressed in elements from surroundings that indicate neither time or place. As in a folktale where the forest could be any forest, and the sea could be any sea, the scenes in Eyes as Big as Plates encourage a sense of timelessness and universality. At the same time, suggestions of narrative enter in by incorporating glasses, footwear and clothing, revealing traces of the characters' individuality and signs of contemporary living.

Eyes as Big as Plates

All images are courtesy and copyright of Karoline Hjorth and Riitta Ikonen