MARJA PIRILÄIn Strindberg's Rooms 10.2.2018 – 11.3.2018

In Strindberg's Rooms 2, 2017
- just when I walk here
pigment ink print
114 × 147 cm
edition 7

MARJA PIRILÄ

 It was an experiment from the beginning. To live and photograph for six months in the dark. To invite the light in. Holes and lenses in the darkened windows. The world upside down, camera obscura. To be exposed to light and reflections. To photograph with a camera inside a camera. Where the light falls, there is the reflection: on notebooks, books, slips of paper, skin, clothes, furniture, ceiling, walls, floor, me. The motion of light. Light notes.

The series In Strindberg’s Rooms was created in 2015 in an artist residence in France, the birthplace of photography. The purpose of my trip was to make new camera obscura experiments inspired by the words of Louis Kahn (1901-1974): "It is good to return to the roots of the phenomenon, because it is a magnificent moment of all phenomena; there you will find the possibilities and the spirit of the phenomenon and also the inspiration for the upcoming tasks.”

The writers’ residence in Hôtel Chevillon, the village of Grez-sur-Loing, became the test laboratory for light and photography. Converted into camera obscura, my rooms were like eyes and their walls like retinas on which the same landscape would reflect: the small village street and silhouette in upside down reflections in the changing light from one day to another. The lens holes in the windows were an interface between the inside and outside worlds, just like the lenses in my eyes are the interface between me and the world. With that interface and light, the reflections of the outside world became part of the room, just like the world becomes part of me.

One day I was told that August Strindberg (1849-1912) had lived in the same apartment in the 1880s. For me, Strindberg had always been more a pioneer of early photography than one of the most prominent and controversial authors in Sweden. The thought of him having worked in the same building inspired my work throughout my stay in the residence. Taking photos alone in the dark, I would think of all the writers and artists that had influenced me during the years: Tranströmer, Pessoa, Magritte and many others.

Strindberg’s experiments with self-made cameras with or without lenses of even without a camera had fascinated me a long time ago when I first started to use pinhole cameras. They led me to the camera obscura method in the 1990s. In my exhibition, the work Wunderkamera/Camera Obscura, built with Petri Nuutinen into a large oak wardrobe, was named after the camera Strindberg had constructed for himself. It visualises the simple but magical phenomenon: camera obscura. Strindberg realised that "our image of the world is but an optical illusion". Therefore my exhibition is a tribute to camera obscura and light.


Marja Pirilä

Photographic artist Marja Pirilä (b. 1957 in Rovaniemi, Finland) has been specialising in the camera obscura technique since the 1990s and introduced it in Finnish contemporary art. Pirilä graduated as a photographer from the University of Art and Design Helsinki in 1986, and the same year, a biologist (M.Sc.) from the University of Helsinki. Her works have been shown in various exhibitions in Europe, the Americas and Asia, and she has many works in several significant public and private collections. She was awarded the State Prize for Photographic Art in 2000, and Carried by Light, a retrospective photography book was published about her work in 2014. In Strindberg’s Rooms was first shown in Serlachius Art Museum Gösta (30.9.2017-21.1.2018).

 
  • pirila/2018/1_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_1

    In Strindberg's Rooms 1, 2017
    - the message
    pigment print
    107 x 82 cm
    edition 7

  • pirila/2018/10_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_10

    In Strindberg's Rooms 10, 2017
    - the whistle of liftoff
    pigment print
    53 x 65 cm
    edition 7

  • pirila/2018/3_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_3

    In Strindberg's Rooms 3, 2017
    - pure existence
    pigment print
    67 x 84 cm
    editio 7

  • pirila/2018/4_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_4

    In Strindberg's Rooms 4, 2017
    - Maija & Miika
    pigment print
    114 x 147 cm
    edition 7

  • pirila/2018/13_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_13

    In Strindberg's Rooms 13, 2017
    - alchemist
    pigment print
    84 x 65 cm
    edition 7

  • pirila/2018/5_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_5

    In Strindberg's Rooms 5, hommage á Fernando Pessoa, 2017
    - the mystery of existence
    pigment print
    107 x 82 cm
    edition 7

  • pirila/2018/15_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_15

    In Strindberg's Rooms 15, hommage á René Magritte, 2017
    - is it wednesday today
    pigment print
    82 x 107cm
    edition 7

  • pirila/2018/6_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_6

    In Strindberg's Rooms 6, 2017
    - old sky
    pigment print
    107 x 82 cm
    edition 7

  • pirila/2018/12_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_12

    In Strindberg's Rooms 12, 2017
    - at the speed of moon
    pigment print
    84 x 65 cm
    edition 7

  • pirila/2018/7_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_7

    In Strindberg's Rooms 7, 2017
    - the night of celebration
    pigment print
    82 x 107 cm
    edition 7

  • pirila/2018/8_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_8

    In Strindberg's Rooms 8, 2017
    - inside the eyelids
    pigment print
    82 x 107 cm
    edition 7

  • pirila/2018/11_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_11

    In Strindberg's Rooms 11, 2017
    - expected until afternoon
    pigment print
    67 x 84 cm
    edition 7

  • pirila/2018/28_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_28

    In Strindberg's Rooms 28, 2017
    - for the living and the dead
    pigment print
    84 x 65 cm
    edition 7

  • pirila/2018/31_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_31

    In Strindberg's Rooms 31, hommage á Thomas Tranströmer, 2017
    - bumblebees of freedom
    pigment print
    53 x 65 cm
    edition 7

  • pirila/2018/34_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_34

    In Strindberg's Rooms 34, 2017
    - possible landscape III
    pigment print
    53 x 65 cm
    editio 7

  • pirila/2018/9_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_9

    In Strindberg's Rooms 9, 2017
    - paths
    pigment print
    82 x 107 cm
    edition 7

  • pirila/2018/14_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_14

    In Strindberg's Rooms 14, 2017
    - Karin & Rory
    pigment print
    67× 84 cm
    edition 7

  • pirila/2018/20_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_20

    In Strindberg's Rooms 20, 2017
    - village
    pigment print
    81 x 112 cm
    edition 7

  • pirila/2018/22_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_22

    In Strindberg's Rooms 22, 2017
    - village
    pigmnet print
    47 x 65 cm
    edition 7

  • pirila/2018/21_Pirila_Strindbergin_huoneissa_21

    In Strindberg's Rooms 21, 2017
    - village
    pigment print
    49 x 36 cm
    edition 7

  • pirila/image001_

    Marja Pirilä and Petri Nuutinen: Wunderkamera/camera obscura, hommage á August Strindberg, 2017
    mixed media
    120 x 60 x 240 cm

  • pirila/image002_

    Light diary 21, 2017
    video
    mixed media
    73 x 45 x 90 cm

  • pirila/image004

    Light diary, 2017
    video
    wooden frame
    32 x 32 x 7 cm

  • pirila/2018/IMG_7253

    installation view, 2017

  • pirila/2018/IMG_7276

    installation view, 2017

 
 
 
 
 
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