Films start with white. The first image of a film is always a white screen. “In my mental image of Finland, the country is a place where, for the best part of the year and throughout most of the winter, the landscape is covered with snow. A gigantic white surface. Hence the title of this exhibition: White Screen”, says the Brazilian artist Wagner Morales (b. 1971). While on Suomenlinna, as part of HIAP’s production residence programme, Morales has made a new work to be shown at the Cable Gallery 1.4.–18.4.2010.

The idea behind this project is to use this immense natural screen and, literally, to project selected scenes from ‘cowboy movies’ onto it. This Hollywood genre explored the relationship between man and his surroundings, revealing human attempts to domesticate the inhospitable, to turn the inhabitable into a home. For Morales, these films share certain similarities with artistic works in open spaces.