Anna Hyrkkänen’s exhibition Fringe shows us a strange greenhouse, a species living in the depths of a sea grave. These small white forms resemble slowly floating icebergs and remind us of circumpolar areas, the last of the real wilderness. Or is it about the space, the unlocalized darkness where human beings are stripped of all epithets?

The artwork places the viewer against a scary scenario where the greenhouse effect gets out of hand. It is an image of a future dystopia in a world after a natural disaster. On the other hand, the piece positions its viewer into the fount of self, the corner of the mind, which is the realm of the subconscious.

Our relationship with the world forces us to define our place in time, both in a concrete and a conceptual level. The darkness surrounding the artwork reflects the incomprehensible strand of our existence. Somewhere in the spatial space, where the sense of time disappears, the faintest of feelings feeling sends us messages of the future. We stare at the image, taking its shape in the dark, until we realize that we are looking at ourselves.

The image in the darkness is moving – time exists.

The works of Anna Hyrkkänen (b. 1979) are forms of sets or stages, where an audience enters and stays in between or in front of. In her work Hyrkkänen depicts both human and inhuman ways of excisting in the world. The atmosphere is often poetic and dreamlike, but at times also threatening and aggressive. In Hyrkkänen’s installations nature is not completely realistic and does not answer to this reality, but instead it is a sort of supernature, a fantasy that exceeds a single space.

Anna Hyrkkänen graduated from The Fine Arts Academy’s department of sculpting as Master of Fine Arts in 2010. She has had private exhibitions both in Finland and abroad since 2006. Her works have been most recently seen in Düsseldorf, Germany during autumn 2013. In 2012 her works were on display in a group exhibition in the Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova Museum in Turku and at the Kumu art museum in Tallinn.

3.7.–1.8.2014

ANNA HYRKKÄNEN

Fringe
Open: Mon–Fri 12–17

Event page on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1436977039902268/
www.annahyrkkanen.com

The exhibition has been kindly supported by Oskar Öflund Foundation.

HIPPOLYTE STUDIO

Yrjönkatu 8–10 (courtyard), 00120 Helsinki, Finland, +358 9 612 3344, www.hippolyte.fi

Anna Hyrkkänen, installation from exhibition Parallelwelt / Parallel Existence, 2013. Photo: Ralf Brueck