Photographic Gallery Hippolyte (Kalevankatu 18 B) on Tuesday, February 7 at 5 pm

Peer-to-Peer Review, HIAP’s collegial format, continues its peregrinations through galleries and spaces throughout the capital. On Tuesday, February 7, the Peer-to-Peer will take place at the Photographic Gallery Hippolyte with three presentations of new artistic projects by HIAP artists-in-residence Delaine Le Bas and Damian Le Bas, Timofey Radya and artist Maija Savolainen, who is currently exhibiting her work at Hippolyte. Among the invited commentators for this session, Mitro Kaurinkoski, the director of Hippolyte, will enliven the discussion.

Delaine Le Bas (b. 1963) and Damian Le Bas (b. 1965) introduce a wholly new radicalism into art of Gypsy origin (Romani, Sinti, Kale, Romanichal,..). This can especially be seen in their newest work on show at the Cable Gallery (opening on February 1) and Kallio Kunsthalle (opening on February 6). Their prodigious and multifaceted oevre ranges from embroidered fabrics employed in self-made architectures and costumes (such as Delaine Le Bas’ latest pieces from the ongoing Witch Hunt cycle) to beautifully imagined mappings (Damian Le Bas’ expressive reworking of European cartography), through to a new series of ‘Gypsy Dada’ works which illustrate the wryly ironic notion of the ‘Gypsy ready-made’ (ideological objets trouvé). Textual elements and video add a further new conceptual dimension to their work, which addresses the horrific state of ‘Gypsy Affairs’ in Europe through a vivid artistic explosion of underlying myths.

Timofei Radya (b. 1977) is from the youngest generation of new Russian street artists, for whom taking risks in a repressive society is a normal part of artistic life. Nevertheless, his at times small-scale, at times monumental works, have often been accepted by public authorities as part of the urban landscape. Like when he and his group illicitly painted a large bridge in the heart of Ekaterinburg (http://t-radya.com/street/14/). We are looking forward with hope and trepidation to seeing what he will develop in Helsinki.

Maija Savolainen (b. 1980) is finishing her MA degree at the Aalto University School of Art and Design, with photography as her major. In her works she explores the relationships between photography, time and motion. Savolainen has previously studied biology and graphic design. She will talk about her exhibition N 45° 54′ – N 29° 42 – Standing Still in Motion at Photographic Gallery Hippolyte: “One morning I decided that time must stop. It was the spring equinox, the 20th of March, and the northern hemisphere was just about to turn once again back towards the Sun. It is impossible not to notice the increase in light: the bleakness of winter gives way to the green of spring, the passage of time becomes visible. What would happen if, instead of staying put and observing the change, one would run to escape the light? To travel at a certain speed towards the shorter day, from north to south. The day would then remain the same length, and time would stop. The photographs in the exhibition are stills of accidents recorded on film. They show things I did not see while being blinded by the Sun. The video was shot at the end of my journey, at the moment of resignation.”