Berit Talpsepp-Jaanisoo’s exhibition in Photographic Gallery Hippolyte continues the artist’s exploration of three-dimensional objects that combine sculpture with photography. With the works in Paradise Beach, Talpsepp-Jaanisoo has strived to capture something unfamiliar yet distinctively present in both mediums. She has been interested in the strange patterns and shapes the artworks form as spatial meets pictorial. 

 Paradise Beach is an installation consisting of free-standing objects and a landscape background. With this body of work, the artist’s aspiration is to bring a wall-based image into the three-dimensional space and activate its relation with the physical objects situated in the same sphere. The work depicts a late holiday afternoon on a beach, with three figures of the same model in different sizes and positions — a film-like sequence of a middle-aged woman sunbathing, having a drink, and then walking into the sea. By playing with proportions, perspective, motion, and time, the intention is to create a kind of spatial photograph — an atmospheric scene or a landscape painting, beckoning the visitor to enter.

At the centre of the exhibition is an image of an “unknown” tropical beach with pristine turquoise water, smooth white sand, and defectless palm trees. It is probably one of the most anonymous yet recognisable landscapes in the world, as the picture could have been taken anywhere warm, where palm trees grow — ultimately a social construction, a distant utopian dreamscape. These are also vivid images from the artist’s childhood in the 1990s when scenes of tropical islands and beaches burst onto the walls of post-Soviet restaurants, dental offices, and relatives’ living rooms — with wallpaper titles like “Paradise Beach,” “Mysterious Sunset,” or “Washed Away.” Talpsepp-Jaanisoo describes how she could have watched those walls forever. 

Beach holidays, once childhood dreams, now symbolise a particular lifestyle. 21st-century vacations have transformed into artificial sandy beaches and boat cruises promoting “authentic” ocean experiences, but have become machine-like resorts filled with seemingly dissatisfied tourists. From the kiosk, you can rent a small sunbed to lie down on. The night will fall, and it will be dark soon. The artist ponders how the passage of time is slow and inert yet indifferent and ruthless. The older we get, the more moments we leave behind.

The older we get, the more we acquiesce and adapt. We slowly fade into the backgrounds that we have created ourselves.

Berit Talpsepp-Jaanisoo is an Estonian-born visual artist based in Helsinki. Her artistic practice is mainly sculpture. In her recent work, she has focused on creating figurative objects through different materials, techniques, and conceptual approaches, expanding her practice from sculpture to other visual art mediums. Creating three-dimensional objects that combine sculpture with photography has been an essential part of her artistic practice. She is interested in how sculptural objects relate to identity, belonging, and trauma, and how working with different materials can open closed passages in our memory and mind. Talpsepp-Jaanisoo studied sculpture at Pallas University of Applied Sciences and the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA). She obtained her Master’s Degree from the Glasgow School of Art in 2011. Since then, her works have been showcased in various art venues in Finland and abroad.

The exhibition has been supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike).

Berit Talpsepp-Jaanisoo
Paradise Beach
12.1.–4.2.2024
Photographic Gallery Hippolyte

image: Berit Talpsepp-Jaanisoo, 2023