In the exhibition Use Your Illusion V by Jarkko Räsänen, works are based on the artist’s family album. The parents of Räsänen, who originate from Heinola, are passionate amateur photographers. The photography culture that emanated from his childhood home has also influenced Räsänen’s photographic work.

Räsänen graduated from the University of the Arts, Academy of Fine Arts, Department of Time and Space in 2011. During his studies, he developed a computer program that slices and rearranges photographic material. The result is a sight that embodies intensity, atmosphere, and impression instead of documentation leaning on realism. The elements are present in the works adapted from images, but the nature of the image changes when the detectable is rearranged.

The exhibition’s name, Use Your Illusion V, refers to impressions and visions. In addition to slicing, the footage has been edited using effects from the demoscene. The demoscene brings a new cultural-historical dimension to editing. The pictures taken from Päijät-Häme and Heinola in the 70s are coloured with a coded aesthetic that also draws from the nostalgia of the demoscene.

Räsänen’s method for editing photographs is reminiscent of the impressionist’s way of blurring the landscape and raising it to the surface of the painting into a strongly flickering vision. Impressionist physicality, which Räsänen manifests as a powerful nervous experience of the world, is also conveyed in the machine-impressionism—such as in the work depicting children with fishing rods, where space-time vibrates tensely around the children. Sometimes the features of the landscape become almost unrecognizable. However, instead of abstract generality or detachment from the place, the reworked images have recorded the bodily memory of a unique moment.

– Sini Mononen

Jarkko Räsänen (b. 1984) lives and works in Berlin and Helsinki. In 2020, Räsänen was awarded the William Thuring Title Award of the Finnish Art Association and the Young Artist of the Year 2019 nomination from the KAK law firm. Räsänen’s works are included in the collections of Kiasma, the Hämeenlinna Art Museum, the State Art Deposit Collection, and the HUS lab. In the autumn of 2021, the works of the Use Your Illusion V exhibition were on display at the Heinola Art Museum in the Illusion exhibition.

The artist’s work has been supported by Arts Promotion Center Finland (Taike) and Oskar Öflunds Stiftelse.

Jarkko Räsänen
Use Your Illusion V

2 –25 September 2022
Hippolyte Studio

Image: Jarkko Räsänen, Kymi 1, 2019