We are pleased to present a solo exhibition by Erkka Nissinen featuring a new series of drawings, animations, and live action videos.
Nissinen’s drawings are depictions of fictional events that oftentimes expand into animations and videos. They picture stories that take place in social institutions such as the workplace, home, nature, the museum, the hospital, etc. They stand as a collection of different behavioural models, codes, and rules that Nissinen seeks to contort. Across his drawings, animations, and videos, Nissinen creates versions of an imaginary society whose institutions are distorted and imploded.
Nissinen’s videos are spontaneous, created in the moment, and they explore a specific idea as economically as possible. On the other, his animation work is the result of a more long-term process: Nissinen aims to create coherent, longer animations that are divided into episodes, each set within a different social institution.
Amidst the political, social, and ecological turmoil that the world is experiencing, coupled with a sense of general pessimism that is increasingly difficult to shake off, Erkka Nissinen makes work to both cope with it and reveal its absurdity. The dark humour present in his work is a means to grapple with the seriousness of the matter whilst not fully succumbing to it. It allows for the possibility of release through comicality, a way of reflecting on the turmoil through its ludicrousness despite the severity of its consequences.
A recurrent theme in his works is the human being as a consumer. Human and design are inseparable from one another, as humans have created themselves through technology. Products, technology, and design are both vital and defining aspects of contemporary humanity—they exist both inside and outside the human being, and humans live among their layers.
In the main space, Nissinen presents a series of ink and watercolour drawings varying in size as well as a video buckets in which the visitor can stick their head to watch short animations related to the drawings. The animations are divided into episodes, each happening in a different place or societal institutions. In the backspace, Nissinen presents short live action videos originally intended for Instagram about different topics: museum architecture, Gaza, the state of journalism, and the prison system, among others.
This exhibition has been made possible with the support of Kone Foundation
