Like "Apparitions" in the landscape, Elina Brotherus's silhouettes (1972) stage the solitude of man facing the immensity of nature – or sometimes, of an interior – with great modernity and astonishing acuity.

Like the man seen from behind, leading our gaze to the edge of infinity in the sublime landscapes of the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), the artist often adopts, particularly in her recent works, the position of her back to the viewer, thus embodying a model whose field of vision coincides with that of the viewer. We are therefore part of the image, transported to the plains, rocky valleys, and deserted mountain ranges explored by the Finnish photographer and videographer, free to feel, meditate, imagine, extrapolate…

Focusing on Elina Brotherus's close connection with music, the Arter Museum exhibition presents, in particular, a series created in 2006 in homage to Erik Satie (Wide View: Homage to Erik Satie). In the disruptive approach that characterizes her work and that imbues her self-portraits with such magnetic power, she combines the unconventional playing instructions inscribed by the French composer in his Unpleasant Glimpses (written between 1908 and 1912) with his traditional Nordic landscapes, thus transformed into imaginary scores: like visual or conceptual injunctions, the master's instructions engraved on the glass framing the photographs lead the gaze From the corner, Outside…, from the Visible to the invisible.

BETWEEN DISSONANCE AND HARMONY

As a counterpoint to her series of photographs and videos, since 2016 Elina Brotherus has been staging musical scores borrowed from other artists or composed by herself, such as her Wind Music (2022). A noisy and burlesque composition, like many of her other works, it draws on the Dadaist legacy of the Fluxus movement and the musical happenings of John Cage or Yoko Ono.

Pushing the interaction between image and sound even further, her Musical Piece, created in 2022 with Finnish composer Max Savikangas, emits a cloud of sounds (pizzicato notes played on an amplified viola) bouncing through space, while the image shows her throwing snowballs in front of power lines reminiscent of a musical score. A new meditation on the passage of time, leading us, with great poetry, to the edge of the absurd and the melancholic.

“ELINA BROTHERUS – WIDE VIEW” – ARTER MUSEUM
IRMAK CADDESI N°13, BEYOGLU, ISTANBUL (Türkiye)
UNTIL AUGUST 27
ARTER.ORG.TR