This Place is Nowhere is a part of an ongoing project by Juuso Noronkoski consisting of photo, video, object and text-based works. Noronkoski examines the borderlines of the photographic image in relation to its forms of perception in the real world – the demarcation between objects, images and written language. More specifically, how each individual means of expression, with different temporal and material qualities, contribute to a common conversational space.

The photographs that are taken or found by the artist, are conceptually and physically modified in various ways. An intervention in an image, made with a definite intention, both disambiguates and reconstructs the meaning of the subject and also concurrently obscures the boundary that separates the surface from the surrounding space and the “real” from the “imaginary”. By stressing the physicality of an object in relation to photographic imagery, Noronkoski aims to bridge the gap between here, the now and there, the latent and displaced.

The text, which is in the form of a poetic short story, narrates the artist’ s thinking process that went behind his creation; however, it is left to the audience to understand if the text information accurately conveys the meanings indicated by the visual images. In other words, it is as if it were an experiment on ‘human empathy’ that has been related through words and images.

At an apparent level, the motifs of Noronkoski’ s works appear concrete, however, when examined at a deeper level, a universality that spreads beyond a specific culture or place is revealed. The photographs are not only a gateway to another time and place, but also mirrors that reflect the actual act of seeing.

In this exhibition, which is also Noronkoski’ s first presentation in Japan, he poses a question on subject and place: the perceptive space in which an image is ever-evolving and displaced. What is an image that exists between the actual and the imaginary and where is that liminal space – at the feet, and in unknown atmospheres?

Cooperation:
Gallery Taik Persons
Support:
The Finnish Institute in Japan
FRAME contemporary art finland
Arts Promotion Center Finland

ARTIST PROFILE: Juuso Noronkoski