15.3.-23.3.2025
MUU Helsinki Contemporary Art Centre
Cable Factory, Tallberginkatu 1 C, Helsinki
Open: Tue–Fri 12:00–17:00 and Sat-Su 12:00–16:00

Metropolitan Blinds is an audiovisual sculpture and exhibition by visual artist Alexander Salvesen and sound artist Walter Sallinen, exploring our divided relationship with nature. The multi-channel video and sound installation, equipped with a motorized venetian blind, investigates parallel realities created by double exposure and the individual’s role as a boundary between two opposing worlds. The blinds symbolize a conscious decision to turn a blind eye. What is revealed within us when we close our eyes? What seeps through ignorance? The work delves into the complex human desire to possess nature and the power structures entangled in it.

The motorized venetian blind function as a dissecting, unifying, and transparent kinetic element, allowing the projected video material on the blinds to appear alternately whole and fragmented into horizontal lines. Similarly, the spatial soundscape of the piece is dissected into spectral slits, moving between recognizable soundscapes and digitally deconstructed abstraction. This interplay creates an audiovisual dialogue between sound and video. The video material has been filmed with various devices between 2019-2025 in Finland and in North and South America.

Exhibited for the first time, the work is part of the same audiovisual body of work that began in the autumn of 2019, inspired by a residency in French Guiana and the impressions it generated. The exhibition also features Snårigheten att förhålla sig till, an art book by Salvesen and Sallinen completed in 2024, containing collaborative works and texts from 2019–2024. The book’s core material was created in French Guiana and later edited during the pandemic years in Finland. The duo’s artistic practice is based on an interdisciplinary documentation of the environment, allowing the book to be approached as a visual poetry collection, travelogue, exhibition catalogue, or something in between.

Since 2018, Alexander Salvesen and Walter Sallinen have collaborated on various projects, often using media art as their primary form of expression. Their works have previously been exhibited in galleries and art festivals across Finland. Their first joint solo exhibition, Throbserving, was held at Gallery 3H+K in Pori last autumn, showcasing their collaborative works that includes text, image, and sound from 2019–2024.

Thank you,
Niklas Pöllönen, Noora Juppi, Sasu Korander

With support from:
Konstsamfundet
VISEK