Sari Palosaari’s exhibition consists of two installations. While creating new situations, they also address issues that affect the built environment and thereby our everyday life. The works were inspired by new building materials that change the perception of time and space in our living environment.

It’s A Silent Agent Doing Its Thing makes use of a soundless cracking agent, expansive cement that was developed for splitting rock and concrete in urban construction sites without any noise or vibration. The moment when the stones crack cannot be determined beforehand, as it is the result of pressure created by the expanding cement. But whereas the silent and unobtrusive method improves efficiency in construction, in Palosaari’s piece it works in the opposite direction. The time in the installation makes no concession to the gallery’s opening hours or viewers’ schedules. The piece also features a studio recording of the sound of stone splitting.

Building Images extends the Hippolyte exhibition space with a glass-walled structure that comes to contain traces of human gestures and activity. Increasingly common in modern construction, glass walls highlight issues of showing, concealment and observation by presenting them in our everyday environment in new ways, forcing life inside these transparent spaces to adapt to reciprocal gazes. “I am fascinated by intentional and unintentional bodily action associated with dwelling in architectural spaces. Transparent spaces challenge our bodily existence as our life takes place in an intermediate place between the private and the public space,” says Sari Palosaari.

Sari Palosaari is a visual artist who lives and works in Helsinki. She has exhibited her work in galleries, museums and film festivals in Finland and internationally, including Norway, Germany, USA, Russia and South Korea. Her previous solo show, Visibility, was held in Gallery Sinne in 2014. The same year Palosaari won an invitational public art competition for the Academic Hospital in Uppsala, Sweden; the piece will be completed in summer 2018. After Hippolyte, the stones will split in Sweden as It’s A Silent Agent Doing Its Thing goes on tour to the winter garden of the Finland Institute in Stockholm in November.

EVENT Wednesday 6.7.2016 starting at 17.30
Stones Crack in Gallery – It’s A Silent Agent Doing Its Thing
The event begins with an introduction by Sari Palosaari to her exhibition Attach, Expand, Collapse, and the recording of the sound of stone splitting. After the presentation, the audience gets to observe the splitting stones. Since the precise moment when the stones split cannot be determined, viewers are encouraged to spend as much time as necessary with the installation. The gallery provides light refreshments. Room for max. 15 people, filled in order of registration.

30 June – 29 July 2016
SARI PALOSAARI
Attach, Expand, Collapse

Photographic Gallery Hippolyte
Yrjönkatu 8–10 courtyard, 00120 Helsinki, Finland
+358 9 612 33 44, www.hippolyte.fi
Mon–Fri 12–17, Sat–Sun Closed