IC-98's new installation in Venice
Finland is proud to present Hours, Years, Aeons, a new site-specific installation by the artist duo IC-98 (Visa Suonpää, b. 1968 and Patrik Söderlund, b. 1974) at the 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia. The exhibition is commissioned and produced by Frame Visual Art Finland, and it is curated by Taru Elfving, PhD, Frame’s Head of Programme. The installation consists of a pencil-drawn animation, sound, tar, charcoal and jute.
IC-98 are known for their animations and installations creating metaphorically charged realms of uncertain coordinates. These landscapes are shaped by interlaced forces of nature and technology, navigation and exploitation, climate and migration. In Venice the viewer is invited to enter this world. The new mixed media installation by IC-98 continues their Abendland cycle of works which, in the artists' own words, aims to "show a world without human beings, the new mutated landscape built on the remains of human civilization. This is not a paradise, not a regained pastoral existence. This is what it means to deal with the end results of the Anthropocene."
Visa Suonpää, Patrik Söderlund and Curator Taru Elfving
"The pencil-drawn animations came about completely naturally. We were already making drawings; then we added duration. This is important: we still don't think of the animations as animations, but as moving images", said IC-98's Patrik Söderlund in conversation with critic Martin Herbert for the new book Hours, Years, Aeons – Moving Images and Other Projects 1998–2015 that was published in May 2015.
Watch Abendland (II: The Place That Was Promised), an extract of Hours, Years, Aeons.
The Finnish Pavilion on the preview week of La Biennale di Venezia, 6–8 May 2015
Inauguration of the Finnish Pavilion by Photograph: Katja LösönenFinland - Biennale Arte 2015
Curator Taru Elfving speaking at the inauguration of the Finnish Pavilion on 7 May 2015.
"Hours, Years, Aeons encapsulates the artists' long-term critical investigations—from boardrooms of power and bounds of public space to ecological frontiers—in a new epic work within which matter and myth merge in the face of today's seismic shifts," says Taru Elfving.
Inauguration of the Finnish Pavilion by Photograph: Katja LösönenFinland - Biennale Arte 2015
Senior Advisor Iina Berden from the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture opening the exhibition on 7 May, 2015.
The inauguration of the Finnish Pavilion on 7 May 2015
Inauguration of the Finnish Pavilion by Photograph: Katja LösönenFinland - Biennale Arte 2015
Ambassador Petri Tuomi-Nikula and Senior Advisor Iina Berden toasting for the exhibition.
Inauguration of the Finnish Pavilion by Photograph: Katja LösönenFinland - Biennale Arte 2015
From left: Ambassador Petri Tuomi-Nikula, Director of Frame Visual Art Finland Raija Koli, Senior Advisor Iina Berden, Curator Taru Elfving with Patrik Söderlund and Visa Suonpää of IC-98.
All rights by Frame Visual Art Finland.
Photos: Katja Lösönen and Ugo Carmeni.
Copyright of the Abendland (II Place That Was Promised): IC-98
