Measuring Time
In this exhibition, Taru Kallio focuses on notions of the feminine, and how this is related to themes such as mysticism, nature and medicine. She translates collected image material into drawings through a complex copying process. The shift from the starting point generates smaller fragments of a story, which then unfolds in new contexts. The result evokes an alternative narrative and opens up for interpretations in a space between the fictional and reality.
Around the house, there are linden trees in a sticky row. Sometimes syrupy goo drops down from the trees with small drops when we sit on a terrace. These drops are so small and sudden that one might think it has started to rain.
I am in my studio in the attic of the house, listening to the humming sound of a football stadium. I made a painting using a fresco called La Peche as a model. In the painting, people are bathing in a small pool on the edge of a forest but I have removed people from the picture. The painting is standing there as I am working with drawings and with a screen. I am spending time staring at it in the studio through the spring and the summer.
I work with drawing as actions of making copies and repetition. Using an archive of images and through careful selection, I work with them by making copies.
I put them on the copy machine. Part of the picture is turning on black. I took a photo of it with my phone and sent it to my email. I project it on the wall. It is forming on the paper while I draw it, as it is, as a reproduction, as a repeated action, forgetting the image, focusing on the lines and shades. The picture turns into abstract shapes to be formed again into a new one I might recognize.Repeating these actions day by day: working with the pictures, with paper, screen, copy machine, and a copy.
Taru Kallio
Taru Kallio (b. 1986, Finland) is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Bergen and the Lahti Institute of Design and Fine Art. She has had a number of exhibitions, including at Kunsthaus Hamburg (2020), Galerie 21, Hamburg (2019), After the Butcher, Berlin (2018) and Archipelago at Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen (2017). She lives and works in Oslo.
The exhibition is supported by Kulturrådet and Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond.
