Anssi Pulkkinen: No Point Here – Indefinite horizons and deviated structions

The exhibition includes railings that alienate instead of acting as supports or leading the eye towards something; a white pedestal intersected by steel slats reminiscent of air-conditioning ducts that fills the gallery in a disturbing way; a rhythmic collection of wall-mounted neon lights, casting about for meaning and signifying nothing.

Although the installations are composed of objects that are fundamentally familiar, they create chaos instead of order. Dislodged from the urban environment and the exhibition context, objects and linkages function as materialisations of the connections between human structures and representations. They emulate instruments designed to delimit and draw an image of a chaotic world through alienation. Detached from their contexts, the objects are a collection of tentative human constructions.

Meandering forms of fluorescent tubes from the series Light (Deviated) appear like unsuccessful neon signs. The neon lights however depict the routes of failed Arctic expeditions from the 18th century to the 1900s.

The alienating gestures of the steel railings in the work Guide (Indefinite View) neither direct to nor define a passage in the space. Instead, they are caught up in uncertain positions, thereby establishing a kind of liminal space.

Channel (Optimized Flow) is a large horizontal pedestal that is intersected by an air duct. The duct borrows its shape from a speculative transpolar sea route extending from the Barents Sea over the North Pole to the Bering Strait, which is currently inaccessible.

Anssi Pulkkinen (b. 1982) is an artist based in Helsinki. He has an MFA from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, where he is currently completing his doctoral degree in visual art. Pulkkinen creates architectural and sculptural spaces and interventions as well as multimedia installations. He often takes the exhibition, its architecture and context, as his starting point, which allows him to investigate the interaction between the artworks and their setting.

In collaboration with: Eetu Huhtala (electronics), Jorma Kaulanen (sound design).

The exhibition has been supported by Suomen Kulttuurirahasto, Taiteen edistämiskeskus, and Oskar Öflunds Stiftelse.