 |
| Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Heijastus metsästä / Reflection of the Forest (FI 2024). From: Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation. Photographer: Sampo Linkoneva, Serlachius. Please do click on the image to expand it to the max. |
 |
| Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Heijastus metsästä / Reflection of the Forest (FI 2024). From: Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation. Cubism is back. |
Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Heijastus metsästä / Reflection of the Forest.
14 Dec 2024 - 27 April 2025 Serlachius Kartano / Serlachius Manor, Joenniementie 47, 35800 Mänttä. Screenings start at 11.30, 12.30, 13.30, 14.30, 15.30 and 16.30.
A 8-channel video installation loop with a changing number of projections. The number and size of projected images (1-8) will vary to reflect the theme of each scene and the material contained in it.
Written and directed by Eija-Liisa Ahtila.
FI 2024 © Crystal Eye – Kristallisilmä Oy. P: Ilppo Pohjola
Cin: Antti Ruusuvuori, Pekka Uotila - 8 x 4K UHD 16:9. Colorist: Pentti Keskimäki. Image post production by Jari Hakala. PD: Tiina Paavilainen. Cost: Johanna Vainio. ED: Heikki Kotsalo. S: Olli Pärnänen - audio 8.0.
C: Eetu Ahtila, Nora Dadu, Sue Lemström, Mitra Matouf. Voice over: Laura Birn, Marika Parkkomäki, Aije Zhou.
Original languages: English, Chinese, Finnish and Swedish with English and Finnish subtitles.
50 min
Introduced by Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Ilppo Pohjola and Pauli Sivonen.
Viewed at the vernissage on a 27 meter screen at Serlachius Manor, 13 Dec 2024.
Serlachius Manor introduction: "Reflection of a Forest is a commission for Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation."
"Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s third commissioned work for Serlachius is “Reflection of a Forest,” an eight-channel installation with the forest playing a central role. Ahtila continues to challenge the narrative of moving images and the human-centric perspective. She seeks ways of representation and expression that can create a more balanced picture of the living reality of our planet."
"Ahtila and her team have filmed the work over three years in various parts of Southern Finland. The piece does not have a traditional narrative but rather events and situations. Its central theme is the spatiality of the forest: how diverse life intertwines in the forest space and forms a connection of existence. The work features various living beings and their fictional thoughts and speech."
"The state of emergency in the environment affects our choices, ways of thinking and perceiving, as well as the role of culture and art in society. The starting point of the work is the shared spatial existence of different living beings – life maintained together."
"Eija-Liisa Ahtila (b. 1959) is internationally Finland’s most renowned contemporary artist. She is known as a pioneer of video art, focusing on works that move in the border line between film and video art. She has uniquely understood the possibilities of moving images as an artistic medium. At the same time, she has continuously produced installations, drawings, photographs, and spatial art."
"Ahtila’s works have been exhibited in internationally significant museums such as MoMA in New York, Tate Modern in London, Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, and Jeu de Paume in Paris. Her works have also been displayed at major contemporary art festivals, including the Venice, Sydney, and São Paulo Biennales and Documenta in Kassel."
"For Serlachius, she has previously created the commissions “Studies on the Ecology of Drama” (2014) and “Potentiality of Love” (2018). These works have later been exhibited around the world."
"Eija-Liisa Ahtila has received numerous recognitions for her work as an artist. In 2009, she was named an academician of art at the age of just 49. She has been awarded, among others, as Commander, First Class, of the Order of the White Rose of Finland in 2020, the Pro Finlandia Medal in 2005, the Artes Mundi Prize in 2006 and Vincent Van Gogh Award for Contemporary Art in Europe in 2000, and Honorary Mention, 48th Venice Biennale, Italy in 1999."
"She has also received several film awards, and has been a Golden Lion jury member at Venice International Film Festival in 2011. She has also received The Honorary Doctorate of Media Arts from Ionian University, Greece in 2019, and from Aalto University of Applied Arts, Finland in 2018."
The theme of the forest has been covered in recent high profile Finnish non-fiction films. Tale of a Forest (FI 2012, D: Ville Suhonen & Kim Saarniluoto, Cin: Teemu Liakka, Mikko Pöllänen, Hannu Siitonen, P: Marko Röhr) grew into one of the most popular Finnish non-fiction films of all time. Once Upon a Time in a Forest (FI 2024, D: Virpi Suutari) focuses on Extinction Rebellion.
Eija-Liisa Ahtila pursues a long-term ecological quest of her own.
Studies in the Ecology of Drama (FI 2014) was a four screen panorama at 360°. To see everything the viewer had to be constantly on the move. The work pursued the insight of The Annunciation (2010): Jacob von Uexküll's idea of all living beings in parallel realities. For instance the critical flicker frequency of the common swift is beyond human capabilities. A dog sees a movie as a cluster of still images. The resolution of time is different from humans.
In A Reflection of the Forest Ahtila's perspective widens beyond the animal to the vegetable world and to all that lives. For a moment I think about Lowell Dean's ecological horror movie Die Alone (CA 2024), in which the vegetable kingdom takes over, turning humans into flesh-eating zombies on our way to self-extinction. In contrast, Ahtila's vision is serene and benign.
Ahtila's ecological cycle opens new possibilities to a key concept of classical aesthetics: the sublime. During the transition from the 19th to the 20th century, the horror of industrial scale warfare shattered among other things the key tenets of classical aesthetics (the beautiful and the sublime). Old ideals proved false, hypocritical and destructive. Modern artists turned their backs to old parameters which of course survived in traditional and conventional work and popular media.
The sublime in the sense of Longinus, Burke and Kant means, as distinct from the beautiful, something overwhelming, awe-inspiring and transcending the limits of the ordinary.
In Ahtila's work we experience a new sublime in insights into the extraordinary senses of animals and visions of the time dimensions in the life of trees, impossible for humans to fathom but humoristically dramatized in Horizontal (FI 2011), a 6-channel projected installation of a magnificent life size spruce tree.
The eight channel video installation of A Reflection of the Forest provides novel experiences in split screen aesthetics. The screen explodes at times to 16 images. The result is a fresh and original entry in the art of montage. Intentionally or unintentionally, A Reflection of the Forest is a hommage to Abel Gance, the father of Polyvision, the triptych cinema. One of Gance's triple screen sequences transforms into a Polyvision tricolor in Napoléon vu par Abel Gance (FR 1927), a brilliant digital restoration of which was released this year by La Cinémathèque française. The epic is also a masterpiece of the avantgarde.
At Serlachius Manor, Polyvision is back in three parallel widescreen moving images, displaying not exploits of war but the eternal stubborn power of life.
