Turkey – Istanbul
Like “Apparitions” in the landscape, the silhouettes of Elina Brotherus (1972) depict man’s solitude in the face of the vastness of nature – or sometimes of an interior – with great modernity and astonishing acuity.
Like the man behind us leading our gaze to the edge of infinity in the sublime landscapes of the German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), the artist often adopts, especially in his recent works, the back position, thus embodying a model whose field of vision coincides with that of the spectator. We are thus part of the image, transported in the plains, rocky valleys, and mountains deserted by the Finnish photographer and videographer, free to feel, meditate, imagine, extrapolate…
Focusing on Elina Brotherus’s close connection to music, the Arter Museum’s exhibition includes a series created in 2006 in tribute to Erik Satie (Large View: Tribute to Erik Satie). In the disruptive approach that characterizes her, which prints to her self-portraits such magnetic power, she associates with it the unconventional play instructions written by the French composer in his unpleasant Aperçus (written between 1908 and 1912) to its traditional northern landscapes, thus transformed into imaginary partitions: like visual or conceptual injunctions, the instructions of the master engraved on the frames of the photographs lead the gaze Corner, Outside… from the Visible to the invisible.
Between dissonance and harmony
As a counterpoint to her series of photographs and videos, Elena Brotherus has been working since 2016 to stage musical scores borrowed from other artists or composed by herself, such as her Wind Music (2022). A noisy and burlesque composition inscribed, like many of her other compositions, in the Dadaist heritage of the Fluxus movement and musical happenings of John Cage or Yoko Ono. Pushing further the interaction between image and sound, her Musical piece, made in 2022 with the Finnish composer Max Savikangas, emits a cloud of sounds (notes played in pizzicato on an amplified viola), bouncing in space, while the image shows her throwing snowballs in front of power lines, evoking a musical score. A new meditation on the passage of time leading us, with great poetry, to the edge of absurdity and melancholy.
ELINA BROTHERUS – Large View
Until 27 August Arter Museum
Irmak Caddesi 13, Beyoglu, Istanbul
Stéphanie Dulout