19 May 2011 to 4 June 2011
mardi au vendredi 14h-19h, samedi 13h-19h
le Mardi 24 mai 2011 de 18h ŕ 21h,
GALERIE LA FERRONNERIE
BRIGITTE NÉGRIER
40, rue de la Folie-Méricourt
75011
Paris
France
Europe
p: +33 (0)1 78 01 13 13
m:
f: +33 (0)1 48 06 50 84
w: www.galerielaferronnerie.fr
Sanna Kannisto, Moraceae : Ficus pertusa, 2001 c-print, 93 cm x 74 cm
Nous avons le plaisir de vous inviter à la présentation de la monographie de Sanna Kannisto, en présence de Nathalie Giraudeau, directrice du CPIF* qui évoquera le travail photographique de cette artiste.
exposition du 19.05.11 au 4.06.2011
*Centre Photographique d’Ile de France, Pontault-Combault, où Sanna Kannisto a bénéficié d’une exposition personnelle en 2008.
A l’occasion de la parution de la monographie Fieldwork, la galerie la Ferronnerie présente du 20 mai au 4 juin 2011 des photographies et une vidéo de Sanna Kannisto, dont un ensemble important de photographies est exposé jusqu’au 26 juin à la Aperture Foundation gallery, New York, USA.
Sanna Kannisto envisage la photographie en tant que document objectif, tout en gardant le désir profond d’exprimer une narration personnelle. L’artiste observe les éléments de la nature -la pluie, les ruisseaux, les toiles d’araignée, le chant des oiseaux, l’évolution des plantes, les déplacements des serpents- y intégrant également sa position d’acteur/chercheur lorsqu’elle produit et interprète ces données. Le projet de Sanna Kannisto est en relation avec un sujet qui a suscité un grand intérêt ces dernières années dans le domaine des arts visuels, le territoire séparant l’art et la science. Par différents aspects, son projet fait aussi référence à l’histoire de la visualisation scientifique.
Ses images intègrent également un sens de l’humour et de l’absurde, un clin d’œil au surréalisme et au structuralisme, aux relations entre avant-garde et anthropologie.
Sanna Kannisto est née en 1974 à Hämeelinna, Finlande. Elle vit et travaille à Helsinki. Elle a étudié la photographie à la Turku School of Art and Communication et à l’University of Art and Design d’Helsinki. Ses oeuvres ont été présentées dans de nombreuses expositions, solo et group show depuis 2002, comme Self-timer, Kunsthalle Fridericianum Kassel, Allemagne, Research and Invention, Fotomuseum Winterthur,Suisse, Arctic hysteria Onscreen MOMA, New York, USA, De Natura CPIF (Centre photographique d'Ile-de-France), France, Déplacement Domaine de Kerguéhennec Bignan, France, Repeat All, au MIS (Museu da Imagem e do Som) São Paulo, Brésil,
Sanna Kannisto - Fieldwork
Working alongside biologists in Brazil, Costa Rica, French Guyana, and Peru, the photographer Sanna Kannisto pursues a parallel project to measure, probe, document, and ultimately blur the line between art and science. "Sometimes it seems so limited or inadequate how we approach nature, the ways that we have to study tropical nature," she observes. "The species' richness is so huge." Her work from 1997 to 2010 is now the subject of a new monograph, "Fieldwork," and an accompanying exhibition is on view at New York's Aperture Foundation through June 23.
Kannisto's photos chronicle the futility, if not folly, of mankind's attempts to impose order on chaos, while at the same time revealing the intricate inherent logic of the natural world. The soft-spoken 37-year-old Finnish photographer, who studied at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki, has no formal biology training, but sees fascinating similarities between artistic endeavor and scientific study. Her work "plays with this idea that photography is evidence, that you trust the image to be objective, even the truth," she says. "But it's kind of a mock study. I wanted to find new alliances between art and science, and to a certain extent, I took on the role of researcher myself."
The casual observer might assume that Kannisto's striking nighttime photographs of bats in flight or stick insects dangling from tree branches are, in fact, merely documentary. Her "Still Lifes" series plays on the conventions of illustrations by Audubon and Buffon by capturing specimens of plantae and animalia in a small, white-walled "studio," a cube about the size of a cardboard box. "The images refer to scientific documentation and natural-history drawings, and also to cabinets of curiosities," she explains.
The photographs have a clinical beauty, but the telltale interventions of both the scientific and artistic approaches (revealed to parallel one another) intrude everywhere — with the armatures that prop up the plants, the duct tape wrapping the bases, the flash-absorbing velvet curtains. Kannisto is in the field for months at a time, looking for specimens, rushing back to her makeshift studio when she finds an especially delicate one, and often handling them herself. "This armadillo I caught myself," she says, gesturing to a photograph titled "Dasypus novemcinctus." "They don't hear so well. I knew where they were living, in a hole near where I was sleeping, and I returned the poor thing to his home after."
A portion of the show — devoted to photographs of the research stations' setups — slyly reveals their affinities with mad-genius laboratories, Rube Goldberg machines, and even the kind of crazed-artist installations that have plagued Chelsea of late. "I like how it looks so absurd that you don't understand it," Kannisto says. "Is it about science, or is it something I did as an artist?" In "Bee Studies," a hut swathed in mosquito netting contains a tripod that hoists a camera above a feeding station, recording the bees' movements and eating schedule, which is controlled by a Lego robot that dispenses nectar. But the absence of human beings and the benign surveillance nevertheless call to mind more-sinister activities — a kind of Panopticon transferred to Jurassic Park.
Lately, Kannisto has been intrigued by the evidence left behind after a study has been abandoned. "I'm interested in how chaos and reason can work side by side," she says, pointing to a trail of multicolored wires insinuating themselves among — or being overtaken by — the curling vines at the base of a tree in "Abandoned Study." "It's kind of mocking the exactitude of science. I was taking a landscape picture, standing there for some time, thinking of how to compose the picture, and then I started to see, Oh, there's flagging tape there," she says. "You're never alone. Somebody was always there before you."
The poetics of her undertaking come to the fore in "Act of Flying," a series that captures hummingbirds in flight within a white-walled enclosure, similar to the one she uses for photographing bats in total darkness. They are delicate, shimmering things that invite a closer look, but flit out of the frame, unwilling to be captured. Like the rest of Kannisto's works, these photographs quietly emphasize the fragility of the natural balance, and the contingency of the scientific lens that brings it fleetingly into focus.
