Aino Autere & Elina Nissinen
SHELL’S WHISPER FILLED THE ROOM
7—28 February 2025
Open Tue—Fri 12—6 pm, Sat—Sun12—5 pm
Opening on Thursday 6 February at 6—8 pm
No more scattered items on the floor. Things in their own places. Organizing: It always produces a similar order. In the mess you can see the originality of a thought. No one else could have made this kind of a mess.
Insomniac rips off petals and finds Fibonacci’s numbers, while the bees build their honeycombs out of perfect hexagons in the yard. At night the machines work to find the next Mersenne prime number.
We settle with counting sheeps.
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1.6180339887… Euclid dreams his geometrical dreams. Things in this world are based on some higher principle, and during the coming days the whole world can be disassembled into numbers. Calming thoughts guarantee a sound sleep.
Seeker sees the organizing structure everywhere. If not the structure itself, at least traces of it. The sand flowing in an hourglass whispers another thing: There are only shards left of the past, and of the future, we know nothing.
I crush the sleeping pill with a kitchen knife into smaller and smaller pieces. Constellation of medicinal dust is left on the plastic cutting board. Mirtazapin is the most poetic of sleeping pills. Smaller the dose, the greater its sedative effect.
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For example 4:5. Or the bent spacetime.
And three dimensional wallflowers on four dimensional walls.
The outside haunts Euclid’s room.
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Sometimes you walk in one reality and see in another. Head turns into a tail in hand. A part is a whole, a whole is just a part.
From the center point of disarray, coils open a symmetrical shell. But why?
Text: Alsa Ojala
The gallery's windows and entrance open to the west, which according to feng shui, is associated with the element of metal. The checkerboard flooring possibly dates back to when the space used to be a dairy shop.The square shape represents the most stable foundation for a structure.The back room is dominated by a narrow spiral staircase that descends to the basement-like ground floor. The spiral, reaching towards opposite directions, is seen as a path connecting the divine and the secular.
The starting point for the exhibition was to explore theories on spatial harmony and spiritual traditions related to energetic attunement, balancing, or purification of spaces. Can such practices be applied in an art context, and what kind of an exhibition could be built on different principles of harmony? Experiencing art can be seen as a ritual itself, and the gallery space as a symbolic structure in which certain conventions suggest different choreographies: ways of tuning, being and moving in space.
Philosophies relating to spatial harmony, as well as numerous spiritual beliefs share the idea of various qualities of energy that can be sensed in spaces.The presence and movement of these energies - whether otherworldly spirits or universal life forces - can be influenced by various spatial solutions and ritual gestures. The utilities and symbolism associated with the perceiving, directing and purifying of energy have been passed down through time, spiritual tradition and culture, although today their meanings have largely been forgotten.
In the exhibition 'Shell's whisper filled the room' the artworks act as symbolic and material transporters of energy. They are gateways to the emotional world, and bridges between the physical and spiritual dimensions.