Hans Rosenström
Divisions – And Other Possibilities

07.06. - 06.07.2014

A work, Hans Rosenström’s work. That work is emphatically in space, made out of space. And not just in any space, but specifically here and now, in the gallery, and precisely the way it is. On its own terms, personally.

Through spatial intervention the gallery space is made individual, into a situation not previously experienced. It changes from general to specific. Perception slows, and in so doing brings about a thickening, an electrification of the space. Via a unique experientiality the situation of the site constitutes an occasion – becoming an event.

Space, situation, occasion and spatiality.

Half Full gets time-and-site-specific content. It consists of gestures and actions that simultaneously open up and close down – attracting us and pushing us away. In the spatial experience our imagination is sharpened, it is actualised, it forms a story, which is shared and passed on; it is quarrelled about and argued over, but it is continued. In everyday life, where else?

In that everyday big little, little big story that equally goes pretty much according to expectations and yet – so that it stays meaningful – is really surprising, and enigmatic. It is equally a liberation and a surrender, a going along with things, participating, as well as throwing yourself into them, influencing and being influenced.

“The space is polymorphous and interesting in itself, so I finally decided not to bring anything else into the space, but to use the existing lights and the gallery space itself as the material for the work. For me an artwork comes about in an encounter, so what is important to me is trying to create as strong as possible a tension between the lights, the space and the viewer. In this work I am interested in how an apparently empty space can be made into a work, i.e. making use of the elements in the space as the circumstances allow.”

“The most important element in the work is the spatial experience itself, when we are no longer talking solely about the quality of the light, even though everything else comes to be significant: the tension between the body and the space, the marks worn into the floor, or the low hum of the air conditioning. All of these things become a part of the story, which is built into the relationship with the viewer.”

The exhibition carries on organically in the gallery’s office spaces. The whole thing combines and articulates the public and the private, space that is open to everyone and space restricted to the personal. The office space is experienced alone, just one viewer at a time. The space is both strange and familiar – amenable to a differentiated experience, rewarding. The space contains its own sound work, plus drawings and video.

“Kaiken osana is a sound work on headphones for one viewer at a time in the gallery’s office space. It constitutes an intimate encounter that plays with the relationship between the listener and the sound, at precisely the moment when it is being experienced. I also wanted something human in the exhibition to act as a contrast to the intervention made in the exhibition space.”

This is about telling a bodily, participatory story, from space to space and back, twisting, transmuting and transforming – over and over again. Opening up and opening out, participating and feeling yourself a part: inventing and finding, feeling surprise and wistful longing. Movement and trajectory, framework and content. And intervention in space, about a situation. About respecting it, about enjoying the possibilities of existing with it.

Artist Hans Rosenström (b. Lohja, 1978) lives and works in London. He graduated from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2007 and also studied at the Malmö Academy of Art. Rosenström’s breakthrough was the work Mikado presented at the Kluuvi gallery in 2009. Rosenström has actively participated in group exhibitions both in Finland and abroad, for example in The Invisible Lady, Amos Anderson Art Museum, Helsinki (2013); Art of Memory, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2013); Nouvelles Vagues, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013) and Reality bites, Kiasma, Helsinki (2012). His solo shows have been seen at different galleries as well as Moderna Museet and Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova museums. Rosenström was awarded the Finnish Art Association’s Ducat prize in 2011.