Jaana Rannikko’s exhibition The Alchemist examines the diversity of the human mind and life. The layered works ponder and question our experience of reality. Rannikko is interested in dreaminess and its overlapping levels, because in sleep we can swim in other scenes and experience inconsistent feelings and experiences. Unreality manifests itself in Rannikko’s works, which contain up to dozens of overlapping layers. In them, dreams challenge reality.

The works on display form a single entity. In the images, human beings and their actions are repeated in different ways. Although the exhibition does not actually deal with portraiture, you can see Rannikko’s interest in the history of it. For the current exhibition, she has disassembled the portraits into parts. Often, a hand has been extracted and presented in different ways. The hand appears in the pictures as helping, receiving and supporting.

Magic, dreams and surrealism emerge from the works as strong visual experiences. The colors of the works support the dreamlike experience. They are dark and bluish or pale and worn, intriguingly alienating. The superimposed visual motifs build worlds that can only be encountered in dreams, where the subconscious processes and structures things that have been experienced. In the portrait of a young woman, the fetuses of twins in the womb are placed on her chest. Looking at the work, the existence of the fetuses becomes a feeling. They turn into worlds of different emotions that we carry in our hearts. The snakes wrapped around the woman’s head are like her fragile mourning cloth. The beauty and harshness of life take shape in the images.

Flora, fauna, eyes, hands – and human beings in the midst of them – compete in the imagery of the works. As do the cycle of life and the experiences originating from it. The works are poetic dream images that allow you to experience dreams during the daylight. Rannikko’s interest in history is strongly reNlected in the subjects of the pictures, as they are not contemporary images. The silent information conveyed by the pictures is palpable, as long as you dare to surrender to it. Turn things upside down a bit and open your palms to see if a butterfly flutters lightly into the air. With many eyes multiplying in unison into the sky to view and wonder.

– Ulla-Maija Pitkänen

Jaana Rannikko is a photographer and visual artist based in Helsinki. In her work, Rannikko deals with the layered nature of humanity, time and place, as well as the networks and stories created by them. Recurring themes in her work are the miracle, mystery and silence of the image. In her work Rannikko combines found drawings and photographs with the ones she has created herself using digital techniques, resulting in multi-layered pieces resembling collage and double exposure. She graduated with a Master of Arts degree from Aalto University’s/University of Art and Design Helsinki’s Degree Programme in Photography in 2010.

The work has been supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.