22.9.2022 - 28.1.2023

Ida Sofia Fleming and Vesa Rahikainen: Liminal Space

The heart of Ida Sofia Fleming and Vesa Rahikainen’s exhibition Liminal Space (Välitila) is a spacious metal sound sculpture. The resonant surface is made of steel plates that have gone through their own cycle to become part of the finished work. They have been burned with fire and dragged on the ground. Having been at the mercy of the weather, they are partly shaped by nature and partly by human touch. The plates have been processed in self-conceptualised ritualistic ways with home-made tools. The process springs from a dialogue with nature, determining in which direction the material’s transformation will begin. All this has left visible traces and hidden layers for observers to uncover.

The exhibition invites the viewer into a fragile atmosphere and discusses the ideas of various liminal spaces between life and death and the intermediate spaces between all the inconsequential events of life. Liminal Space is delicate but, at the same time, heavy and deep. The themes of floating and grounding overlap and create a spatial experience for the viewer.

The sculpture in Liminal Space strongly connects to Vintti’s spatial features via, e.g. the scale and by mirroring the shape of the round window. Along with the metal sound sculpture, the exhibition presents a video depicting the process as well as the tools used in the process. The exhibition was selected for the Kunsthalle Seinäjoki program through the Vintti open call, conducted in 2021.

photo: working process of the rusty metal plates

 

Ida Sofia Fleming works at the interface of sculpture, performance art, acting, and music. It is typical of her work to pick up meaningful elements of different art fields from each other, thereby deepening her practice. Fleming lives on a hundred-year-old farm in Kyrönlahti, Finland and works mostly outdoors, even during winter. Her working spaces are a workshop, a studio in the yard, and the fields—where the process of rusting the metal sheets takes place in the furrows. The countryside way of life is strongly reflected in her works. Nature is firmly present in everything she does. Essential in Fleming’s work is tactile physicality and the processing of materials in nature. Through nature, Fleming feels that she finds the most important tools for making art and transmitting notions around the perception of time, fragility, strength, and silence. The themes of Fleming’s works are architecturally focused on spatial, sacred, sound sculpture installations. The works are stage sets embedded in architecture about memories and the transience of matter at this moment. She does not create objects, but spaces to be experienced, or a traces, which inhabit the viewer’s body through movement. The essential starting point in the work is always the structural environment, how the sculpture will be in the location, what it brings to the space from the present moment, and how it exists.

 

Vesa Rahikainen’s artistic work explores the fundamental essence of materials and techniques. His sculptural work is a ritual-like expressive process where the body, as both the creator and experiencer of art, is contemplated. An interest in physicality and immaterial expression has come through Taiji, Qi Gong, and Taoist exercises, which he also teaches. He works at the Academy of Fine Arts as the technician of the sculpture studios and as a metalworking class teacher; and in this role, he is a silent background support for many young sculptors. Currently, he is on leave from his work, focusing on a project about his personal connection to nature supported by the Kone Foundation.

Filming and editing: HALO Creative

Photo of the exhibition: Mika Rinta-Porkkunen