ALEXANDER SALVESEN
In Visibilis VI
5.1.-17.2.2024
Vernissage: 4.1.2024
Borgå Konsthall – Porvoon Taidehalli
Läntinen Aleksanterinkatu 1, 06100 Porvoo
When did you last think about your eyes and the complex process that constitutes your sense of sight?
In the exhibition In Visibilis VI, light is the driving force and that which happens in the meeting with the observer and the world. We easily forget that the world we live in is not absolute or precise; our senses and emotions colour how we perceive what actually exists before us. Everything that exists does so in relation to something else, every action prompts a reaction, and nothing arises in a vacuum.
In Visibilis – invisibilis – is a play between what we see and what we do not see. Vision is a complex, multi-phase process where our interpretation quickly comes into play, pushing us onto tracks we have already travelled. The exhibited artworks primarily want to be just images for you to see; interpretation is not that important. How do you view your own seeing? Can you focus so early in the sensory chain that you can enjoy a kind of freedom that doesn’t need interpretation? How does your eye function? Can you notice the opposing colours that arise in the eye and brain? How does depth change as you move around the room? How does your perception change when you cross your eyes?
Afterwards, it becomes meaningful to ponder what the artworks might represent, or what symbols can be found. The Perception Calibrator series is just what the name suggests. Works to try and calibrate your eyes, your vision. Blue and yellow are opposites, as are green and red. White light contains the entire visible spectrum of electromagnetic radiation that we can see. The afterimages on the retina linger as you close your eyes, what is real light and what exists only in your mind? To top it all off, it’s all highly individual!
The ultimate calibrator for sight and life is still the Sun. Since the emergence of life, the sun has dictated a rhythm of day/night, light/darkness over our home planet. We have learned to follow and understand the seasons and rejoiced over times when the boundary between day and night is even or maximal, events that the work Light Alignment: Solstice and Equinox is based on.
Artificial light, now shining ubiquitously at all times, has disrupted our relationship with the sun. This constant illumination allows us to see whenever we desire, scattering the darkness and enabling a transformation of the planet that was never before possible. Its presence has made us more efficient by extending our days, thereby giving us more time to explore, build, dig, destroy, marvel, and transform. Yet, the cost of this shift is only beginning to emerge in our declining health and mental well-being. Moreover, our actions have trapped sunlight in the atmosphere, leading to a change with catastrophic consequences. Light, while being the most crucial building block of life, also harbors immense destructive power. Finding a balance is imperative.
The exhibition’s visual expressions are based on barcodes and one of the most classical and simple artistic expressions – the line. A line has a beginning and an end; it represents a segment of time. Barcodes are a binary, data-driven, sterile language for computers, developed to streamline various capitalist systems – faster, cheaper, more efficient. The black and white binary codes lack the diversity of interpretations and meanings that we find in our languages and ways of being and thinking. I wonder, what do we lose when we simplify systems to just yes or no, right or wrong, ones and zeros?
I think of time, acceleration, society, and humanity in a globally heated landscape that is in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. How you view the world influences how you live in it, shaping the nature of our world. The way you live affects how everything else here lives, and dies.
