30 January – 22 February

Opening on Friday, 30 January at 6–9 pm!

The exhibition Interpreting the Frame, curated by Boshko Bosković uses several photographic archives as a point of departure to commission new works by Helsinki and New York based artists. The primary source of inspiration was the rich collection of the Finish Museum of Photography along with several photography collections from Russia and the United States. This initiative portrays artistic responses to the past through pictures from private family albums, institutional archives and historic documents. The works presented take many forms, including sculpture, drawing, film, video and site specific installation. The participating artists are Zeljka Blaksic, Liinu Grönlund, Tatiana Istomina, Jonna Kina, Tanja Koljonen, Juuso Noronkoski and Mikko Rikala.

The seven contemporary artists initially excavated and analyzed materials by well-known as well as amateur photographers from different eras and topographies. Their working method is an act of translation where the original images become a foundation for creating new artifacts. The artists are challenged to come up with visual solutions through different modes of engagement, generated as a direct response from their interaction with archival materials. The resulting illustrations unlock and foreclose interpretive possibilities, allowing viewers to experience historicity affectively, creating an atmosphere and a space for reflection on the passage of time.

The aspiration for this project is to build a framework within which artists are inspired to produce new compositions by employing archival photographs that are subsequently decoded and reconstituted. This undertaking establishes an open field of dialogue between historic collections and diverse contemporary practices, leaving room for surprises and unexpected developments. Each newly commissioned work becomes an imaginative narrative placing the viewer between several realities, which continuously travel backward and forward. This proliferation of prospects is one of the most stimulating and rewarding outcomes that a perspective spectator discovers in experiencing the exhibited works.

The exhibition is enabled by the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York’s MOBIUS fellowship program.

Boshko Bosković is the Program Director of Residency Unlimited in New York. His curatorial practice contributes to promoting unexpected multicultural relations and realities. He has curated numerous exhibitions such as Monument-Movement at Muse, Center for Photography and the Moving Image (New York), Not So Distant Memory at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts and at the National Center for Contemporary Art (St. Petersburg, Russia), Future Perfect, Dazibao Art Center (Montreal), Paint Me Sculpturly, Artopia Gallery (Milan), Power of the Brandat the Contemporary Art Museum (Banja Luka, Bosnia & Herzegovina). In collaboration with the collective La Fabrique d’Expositions he curated the video program Videozones in the context of Montreal/Brooklyn, which was presented at the Galerie de l’UQAM (Montreal) and at Interstate Projects gallery (New York). He published essays for many of the aforementioned exhibitions.