Foundlings I
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First shown in: “Anne Koskinen”, Galleria Orton, Helsinki, Finland, 8 January – 2 February 2013
In her most recent works Anne Koskinen has turned her attention to stones found from her own backyard. The artist is fascinated by the opportunities of this material for creating images.
Koskinen is particularly interested in a question that is both mundane and the source of endless wonderment for artists who make images with their hands, i.e. when does material become an image? The artist proceeds from a fundamental process of image making that is of utmost simplicity. She seeks natural stones with the emerging beginnings of images. She looks for difference between the image and the not-yet-image.
Anne Koskinen makes her works completely by herself from start to finish, for she wants to bear witness, with her own hands, to the ways in which an image begins to appear in natural material. Pristine natural stone provides a starting point for a work that Koskinen creates via negation, removing the stone material that, on the other hand, is the basic condition for the existence of the piece. The parts remaining untouched point beyond the making of images. Just as a drawing will not contain areas lacking meaning even though they are ”empty”, neither does Koskinen’s sculpture contain parts that would lack meaning. Instead, natural stone brings forth the idea that the images are based on double display, simultaneously presenting something while appearing in their own materiality. This is also indicated by the German title of the piece, Findling, meaning not only a found infant but also an erratic boulder.
Galerie Anhava, The Armory Show, Pier 94, New York City, USA, March 7-10, 2013. Works from the series were first shown in “Anne Koskinen – Solo Show”, Galleria Orton, Helsinki, Finland, 8 January –2 February 2013. Further information here (in finnish).