No Time for Lover
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Galerie Anhava, Helsinki, Finland, 6 –30 September 2012
Throughout her career, Anne Koskinen (born 1969) has addressed the relationship of the original and the copy. She has forged postage stamps, made complete copies in wood of works by other painters and casts of road-kill, mice caught in traps, of her own paintings etc.
She now feels that making copies and observations in general has given her so much information about reality that the time has come to work without an “original”, from her own mind with knowledge as the basis. Fiction and phenomenology seem to interest her.
Quoting the German psychologist Bernd Weidenmann, Koskinen notes “The image is an abbreviation of reality”, adding that “art is not the transcript of a police interview”. Therefore, one may and must correct things, lie and embellish.
Making an image involves continuous choices. What has to be excluded to avoid information glut? How small can hints of form be for the viewer to be able to interpret an image. The title of the exhibition, No Time for Lover, stems from this. Koskinen occasionally receives emails from a Chinese company offering assistance in making sculptures to give the artist more time for travel or to be with her family or lover. But to delegate sculpting does not suit Koskinen’s manner of working. Many important solutions emerge during the work and concern the properties of the material. Therefore, Anne Koskinen makes her sculpture herself. And does it well.
Anne Koskinen is a combination of a sharp theoretical thinker and a craftsperson. Her new stone sculptures are magical. They are hard to describe. On the one hand, they are simple and monumental despite their small size. On the other hand, every detail is carefully considered and consciously executed. They have immense intensity and presence.
The gold drawings are drawings in gold on paper. While employing a model but they, too, are abbreviations of reality.
Ilona Anhava
Further information here
See also Andrei from Kummelskär