Pekka Niittyvirta, Monsters, Dark Mills and Angels III. Photo: Pekka Niittyvirta.

Press release, July 2020

In the 3rd iteration of Pekka Niittyvirta’s exhibition trilogy, photographic works and interactive sculptures form an installation-like body.

The exhibition showcases judicial settings, walls and facades – borders and prisons. The photographs taken in The United States and Palestine present one reality without claiming a documentary position – settling themselves between notions of the factual and the imaginary. The interactive photographs prohibit the viewer from seeing them up close, undermining the notion of non-transparent nature of the judicial system. Sculptures in the exhibition combine the temporality and documentary quality of the photograph, alongside the commercial and institutional framework and aesthetics of the fluorescent tubes.

checkpoint qalandiya. Photo: Pekka Niittyvirta.

North entrance hall. Photo: Pekka Niittyvirta.

Depicted in Monsters, Dark Mills and Angels is the growth of the global market economy as well as geopolitical and economic tensions by means of omnipresent control, judicial manipulation, and the landscape. Niittyvirta’s trilogy forms a science fiction story of worldwide hedonism. Humankind is altering our environment and its structure, climate and landscape, as our culture strives to adapt to ever accelerated change. The concept of power, as well as information, seem to be fragmented, or rather transformed, into a kind of global mill, as if power is produced somewhere beyond reach. Paradoxically different cause-effect relationships are acknowledged and gradually revealed.

Monsters, Dark Mills and Angels III. Photo: Pekka Niittyvirta.

Monsters, Dark Mills and Angels III. Photo: Pekka Niittyvirta.

Monsters, Dark Mills and Angels III. Photo: Pekka Niittyvirta.

Monsters, Dark Mills and Angels III. Photo: Pekka Niittyvirta.

Monsters, Dark Mills and Angels III. Photo: Pekka Niittyvirta.

Some of Niittyvirta’s trilogy’s photographs are digitally constructed landscapes, some are existing structures or their variations. The original cultures, places, and borders are largely faded. Nature is restricted to artificial environments such as zoos and dolphinariums. They present nature only as a resource of raw materials or of speculative commercial products.

Supreme court. Photo: Pekka Niittyvirta.

Pekka Niittyvirta (b. 1974, Helsinki) works at the intersection of installation, photography, video, and alternative image technologies – blurring the boundaries of experimental, conceptual, and documentary work. Through several aesthetically and substantively divergent projects, Niittyvirta views our socially constructed realities critically. Since 1999, Niittyvirta’s works have been exhibited in Finland and abroad, in solo and group exhibitions. In 2014, he earned the Environmental Artwork of the Year award and was a chosen finalist for Fotofinlandia in 2004, 2006, 2014, and 2016.

Niittyvirta’s works are included in numerous collections held by institutions such as Kiasma, Serlachius Museums, HAM (Helsinki Art Museum), Pro Artibus Foundation, The Palestinian Museum, Art Society of Finland and The Finnish State Art Collection.

Opening: Saturday, July 11. From 11-13.
Exhibition period: July 11. - September 30, 2020.

The exhibition has been kindly supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland, the Danish Arts Council and Oskar Öflunds Stiftelse.