4 – 27 April, Cable Gallery

Three videos by three artists who use methods of performance. All the videos are short. They all balance between a sense of thrill, melancholia, and humour. The videos and the screening are realised on the artists’ initiative, outside the conventional institutional procedures.

Carlos Llavata: Penitent Bridge

It is that rare and magical moment when a serious researcher (who has been practising performance as a prayer) finds the perfect match between his own language and the inner resonance of it.

Loïc Connanski: Bande-Annonce

The French word “Bande-Annonce” means a film trailer.

In a Parisian market, an unknown video artist shouts to the consumers to let them know that he doesn’t sell bananas or oranges but videos. Nobody cares…

Tomasz Szrama: Give me the Light

A couple addicted to cigarettes, performed by Tomasz Szrama and Liina Kuittinen.

Carlos Llavata (b. 1964)

Independent visual and performance artist. 1983 he started an art education at the Ceramics School of Manises. Then he moved to San Francisco and attended SFAI for about a year, never officially enrolled. Later on he returned to Spain, finished his studies at the Fine Arts University in Valencia, and in 2001 he graduated The Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. He has organised around 90 official collective events (mostly performance events) and presented his work in six solo shows.

Loïc Connanski (b. 1958)

Video artist since over 17 years, Loïc Connanski is quite unclassified as a contemporary artist. He is also rather disturbing. His method of working is one of derision. Connanski’s technique of auto-filming is close to that of Nelson Sullivan, the New York based video artist. He is the anti-thesis of the political correct in that he always says what he thinks, quite directly. Connanski is also what he says himself an “ego hunter”, hunting the egos of the art world, and asking them the simple questions around their work. He is an intellectual who works with the negation of the intellectual discourse. He started recently to realize performances, although one also can see his video work as performances in front of a camera and then broadcasted on French national television. He has a corrosive humour where the pre-dominating quality is his love for language. His preferred target is television, around which he proceeds with a complete demontage of appearances and the “labyrinth of illusions”.

Tomasz Szrama (b. 1970)

Tomasz Szrama graduated in 1998 from Fine Art Academy in Wroclaw, Poland. He lives in Helsinki, Finland. Since 1996 Tomasz makes happenings, performances and art videos. As of 2005 he has been co-organizer of performance art events in Helsinki called Art Contact, (from 2009 New Art Contact) and documenting experimental art festivals and live art events. In 2011 he was the co-organizer of Fake Finn Festival of Experimental Art and the following Fake Finns and Others events. Szrama is presently working at HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme.