NANNA HÄNNINEN: Plants/Objects/Paint

Saturday, April 23, 2011

The Galerie ftc., Berlin, is showing an entirely new group of works by Finnish artist Nanna Hänninen. Up to now, Hänninen’s work has been dominated by abstract photography. This new group of works is therefore special, because it unifies photography and painting into a type of depiction that is more object-oriented, while the realization of the pictorial content remains in the realm of the abstract. Another important element, besides this interplay, is the relation between color and black-and-white.

Hänninen’s approach is obviously of a conceptual nature: through digital processing, color values are removed from the original color photographs of the subject, so that the-now black-and-white photographs serve as the ground for the painting’s components. Using the RAL color system, the original color values are calculated, then mixed together out of acrylic paints, which are next applied to the prints, in a pastose manner of painting. In a final step, these overpaintings are photographed with a studio camera and made into large prints.

Here, the conceptual aspect is indicated in the way the two art forms are overlapped, as well as the way that color and black-and-white are intertwined. Besides its purely technical and aesthetic fascination, the process poses questions about authenticity and imitation.

In the final results, to what extent are reality and artificiality shifted? Eventually, the color, the thing that was once real, is artificially re-created and, in the process, reality itself is altered, leading to a work of art that relates the artificial to the authentic, while at the same time questioning this relation.
A further aspect of this body of work is that of overpainting: The artist has deliberatley decided on leaving some parts of the objects in black-and-white while covering others with paint. Hereby the focus of the beholder is drawn to certain aspects of the works – and also to what lies underneath.

Nanna Hänninen began studying at the Finnish photography school TaiK in 1998, graduated in 2002, and is now regarded as one of the members of the Helsinki Photo school.
She lives and works in Kuopio, Finland.

– Text from FTC Gallery newsletter

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