05/05/2022
Congrats to Dominik Fleischmann and Lotta Blomberg on their solo exhibitions opening tonight at Hippolyte Gallery, Helsinki:
Dominik Fleischmann
The scent of flowers
A touch of the earth
May 6-29, 2022
Photo gallery Hippolyte
The Scent of Flowers, Touch of the Earth exhibition is dedicated to mice and rats exploited in the name of science. By combining photographs of animals bred for experiments and dry flowers, the exhibition seeks to spark a debate about the ethical and moral disadvantages of animal experiments and the detachment of man from nature. Fading flowers symbolize grief and sorrow, but they also have beauty and comfort. As with the innocent idea that in the permanent reciprocity of nature, nothing will ever die, life will only change its shape.
The series is inspired by the novel Flowers by Algernon (1969) by American author Daniel Keyes, in which a man and a mouse go through the same experiment to increase their intelligence. The themes of the book are still relevant in a society that values reason and intelligence instead of love and empathy - in a society that normalizes the treatment of life as a resource. The contrast between documentary images, personal notes and videos, and the clash between paper, flowers, earth and steel, ask us to fulfill our mission as part of a breathing world.
http://www.mysilentkingdom.com/
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Lotta Blomberg
Shifting Channels
May 6-29, 2022
Hippolyte Studio
Lotta Blomberg’s exhibition at Shifting Channels Hippolyte Studio examines the physiology of vision, imagination, and tactile tactility. The central work in the exhibition, a seven-square-meter rug, is based on a microscopic image of a blind spot in the artist’s own eye. In the image of the rug, the meandering veins of the groping are a prerequisite for vision, but at the same time, together with the optic nerve, they cause a blind spot of observation, a blind spot.
In the words of architect Juhani Pallasmaa, “All the senses, including sight, are an extension of the sense of touch; the senses are specializations of the skin tissue, and all sensory experiences are forms of contact and thus akin to tact. ” aptly describe Blomberg’s way of thinking about photography as an experimental art form. By choosing a porous rug to represent a medical image, the artist equates the rod and pin cells of the retina with the texture of the image tissue while challenging the usual ways of presenting a photograph.
https://www.lottablomberg.com/
