In Jarno Vesala’s work, a robust and mood-based story takes on a three-dimensional form which solicits participation and emersion. The site-specific installation, I remembered otherwise, built within Photographic Gallery Hippolyte, explores the vulnerability and accuracy of remembrance, “golden” childhood recollections, and the relationship of memory to photography.

Vesala’s exhibition revisits periods of childhood and questions how time colours these experiences, and generates their constructed nature, through the layering of storytelling, dreams, and photographs. After years, how can one pinpoint the moment of importance—the instance that shaped one’s current identity? What would it be like to experience that happening as an adult? How would history inspected with fresh eyes distort and shift our understanding of ourselves?

It has been researched that one cannot retain the details of a shocking or influential experience. Memory is a lively and repetitive film reel—instead of voraciousness or “trueness” to direct one’s vision of the past, Vesala is interested in what happened before or after what occurred leaves its mark, in the gaps that flank our lasting impressions. What leads up to these sound etchings in our mind, and what is left unrecorded? Photographs play a central role in the formation of personal historical memory: they help to create both individual l and collective identities. Just as a person naturally stores everyday life in her mental repository, the photograph is stored in a materially external archive: on film, paper, or electronically. In Vesala’s exhibition, memory has become a simplified and cinematic theatrical actor.

Vesala’s work combines several forms of artistic expression, such as video, sculpture, and sound—creating enterable structures where viewers can imagine and see themselves and tacitly engage with the materials. The piece is both a static, three-dimensional photograph and a living scene that surrounds the observer. Through small gestures, Vesala asks questions around notions of being human. The audience is drawn into a tense and slightly distracting environment where actions and movements change the surrounding story and its atmosphere.

Jarno Vesala is a sculptor and visual artist living and working in Nokia. He is known for his installations, which often consist of human-like sculptures, sound, and moving images. The works are often based on perception and illusion, creating mysterious, sometimes scary, atmospheres. Vesala’s themes are often related to loneliness and forgetfulness. In 2013, he was chosen as The Young Artist of the Year. He graduated as a visual artist from Tampere University of Applied Sciences in 2004 and has exhibited his works in several solo and group exhibitions in Finland and abroad.
www.jarnovesala.com

The Alfred Kordelin Foundation, the Arts Promotion Centre Finaldn, and the Finnish Cultural Foundation kindly support the exhibition.

In media
Helsingin Sanomat

Jarno Vesala
Muistin toisin
Photographic Gallery Hippolyte
28.2.–22.3.2020
Open: Tue-Fri 12-17, Sat-Sun 12-16

image: Jarno Vesala, I remembered otherwise, 2020
exhibition images: Milla Talassalo