Eeva Karhu | Shadows Within

Persons Projects | Helsinki School is thrilled to present
Eeva Karhu’s solo exhibition “Shadows Within”, opening on
Friday, 11 of September 2020, on the occasion of the
Berlin Art Week. The show will also be part of the
European Month of Photography Berlin.

Eeva Karhu is one of the new generation of artists
emerging from the Helsinki School who use nature and its
seasonal passing as their personal barometer to measure
and translate our world by the power of its presence in our
daily lives.

She uses photographic process of layering one image upon
another as her method for collecting the passage of time.
This is most evident in her ongoing Path series, where she
photographs the same walking route she takes from her
home. After her walk, she compiles all the photographs
together into one image to form the given moment they
were taken in. Karhu continues this process throughout the
year, creating her own visual calendar of time periods
based on the harvesting of light from one moment to the
next.

In her “Season” series, Karhu expands this composition by
coloring the view to form what one season would look like
as a single image. These images become far more
abstract, yet still have the feeling and look of an
impressionistic painting from another century. It’s as if she
is painting with light. Her spring looks like Monet and her
autumn contains the colors of Renoir and her tones are like
those of Turner.

Unlike other photographers who use a similar process of
photographic layering to appropriate an image, such as
Idris Khan or Santeri Tuori, Karhu inserts herself within the
act of taking the photo. We see her as an abstract blur,
almost ghost-like, sometimes with color from her coat or
hat, but nevertheless present. Her path is more than just a
place, but rather is like a mental space that she travels
through to find the beginning and closing of every day. Her
photographs encapsulate the varying degrees of Finland’s
seasonal light: sometimes soft and iridescent, but more
often than not fleeting with a touch of gray and the hope
for blue.

The opening of the exhibition “Shadows Within” will include
the presentation of the new publication by Eeva Karhu:
Polku | Paths, Parvs Publishing Ltd. 2020.