ANTTI LAITINEN

WANDERER

The video work Wanderer was created by Antti Laitinen in his nearby forest, in a thicket of spruce trees just before the snowfall last winter. On the video, a large sphere of branches and twigs starts slowly rotating in the air, gently surrounded by the branches of neighboring trees, rising towards the sky like curtains unveiling a scene.

The title of the work refers to the Ancient Greek word πλανήτης (planētēs), which has come to denote the planets of the solar system, wanderers in the sky. The rotating sphere is the forest's wandering planet, formed out of the essence of the woods into a kind of a condensation of the forest.

The otherwordly soundscape for the work was created by sound designer Salla Hämäläinen.

Broken landscape (Lafite)

In 2022, Antti Laitinen was invited by the French wine estate Lafite to interpret Château Lafite Rothschild and the vineyards located in Pauillac, France. The estate has been working annually with artists, mostly photographers already since the 1970's. Laitinen got the opportunity to spend time at the vineyard and Château Lafite – he worked with the willow trees by the garden's pond and produced a series of photographs for the estate.

"Working in collaboration with our team of gardeners, he balanced carefully on a ladder day after day for a full week, trimming and weaving the pliable willow boughs into perfect circles with painstaking precision. Round ‘windows’ opened in the thick canopy of branches, allowing sunlight to penetrate to the shade beneath – and a viewer within to peer out toward the sky."

Take a look at Antti Laitinen's series of photographs for Château Lafite Rothschild HERE

Charcoal and Ice

The series Charcoal and Ice was created by Antti Laitinen last winter 2023–24. The starting point for the idea was the regular grid of a squared paper, which Laitinen sawed into the thick ice of neighboring lakes and the sea. He used an angler grider to carve the lines, captured the resulting light grey grids with his camera, and then proceeded to rub charcoal into the grooves. Laitinen alternated by washing some of it off with warm water, adding some charcoal, again wiping the black off where needed, and taking photographs of the different steps of the process.

The colour photographs show an image in black-and-white, but when examined carefully, one can detect a small orange leave trapped under the ice, or the faint red markings the rusty grider left on the edges of the ice. In the gallery space there are two sizes of the series: large ones are 1:1 of the grid the artist made on the ice, and the smaller ones return back to the initial idea and the size of a sheet paper.

video: Antti Laitinen

ANTTI LAITINEN IN AN EPISODE OF "IRTI KATSEESTA"

The second episode from the first season of Irti Kuvasta, photographer Meeri Koutaniemi's documentary series on art that aired on the Finnish broadcasting company YLE in 2021, concentrated on the art practice of Antti Laitinen. The episode shows the various ways Laitinen works through performance, video, photography and installation, and the physical commintment he has to his work. Laitinen and Koutaniemi reflect on the bodily aspects, ingenuity and power of play in art. "Is nourishing the inner child vital to thinking outside the box?"

The language of the series is Finnish and the show can be viewed on the national streaming service YLE Areena:

WATCH THE EPISODE

Reflecting his uncompromising attitude towards both physical work and the artistic process and content, ANTTI LAITINEN's carefully manufactured artworks often look into the relationship of man and nature and the concepts of natural and artificial. In his manner of working the essential aspects are the testing of physical and psychological boundaries, the absurdity of situations – and even humour. Laitinen’s works are often based on performance, the presence of the artist, which is documented with the means of photography or video.

Antti Laitinen (b. 1975, Raahe, Finland) has attracted considerable attention both in Finland and internationally for many years. His practice ranges from photography to installation, from performance to moving image. Laitinen has presented his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions and festivals throughout Europe, the United States and China, most recently in solo shows at the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum in Turku and the GSA Gallery in Stockholm (2022), as well as the Wuhan Biennale (2023) and the Sequences Biennale in Reykjavik (2023). In 2013, Laitinen represented Finland at the Venice Biennale. Laitinen graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2004. He has work in the collections of Tangen, Saatchi Collection, Borås Museum of Modern Art, Saastamoinen Foundation, Helsinki Art Museum, Kiasma, and Wäinö Aaltonen Museum/Turku City Art Museum.

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ANTTI LAITINEN: Wanderer

WANDERER

Broken landscape (Lafite)

Charcoal and Ice

ANTTI LAITINEN IN AN EPISODE OF "IRTI KATSEESTA"

ANTTI LAITINEN