Moments Out of Frame

The text was written for the solo exhibition Entrance to Exit at the Helsinki City Art Museum Kluuvi Gallery, 2009.
Text in Finnish/Teksti suomeksi


A successful magic trick makes use of the way we perceive reality. The brain only focuses on one thing at a time, and if the magician succeeds in diverting the attention of the audience, coordination between the eye and the brain is disrupted and the trick can be carried off. The ruse is often quite visible in the video works and photographs of Sini Pelkki (b. 1978). The viewer's attention is diverted to things and details that are not completely in view. We follow the magician's cheating hand, and what happens then?

Sini Pelkki’s videoinstallation Entrance (2006/2009) / Exit (2009) is a document of everyday life, which utilizes means inherent to the moving image, such as inaccuracies and disturbances as well as unexpected narrative turns. Alongside natural sounds recorded during filming, in both of the pieces the videos highlight small events that play with our field of vision. In Entrance our attention is drawn to a strong flare and a subtle breeze blowing the girls hair. In Exit our focus is on the medium itself, the very materials of video and photography. Grainy film and sharp video alternate to create a sense of something already happened. What has occurred in the house that’s depicted and in its corridor? A strong sense of exteriority makes the whole viewing experience bewildering. Who is telling this story? And who are its protagonists?

Passage (2009) continues Pelkki's series of experimental video works (Statue, 2006 / Concealment, 2007 / Ceremony, 2008). All these works are based on photography; they are made from stills shot on film which Pelkki then scans on a computer to work on the individual images. Passage is based on four photos: two photos of light projected on a wall by a slide projector, and two of dust inside the projector itself.

Passage leads one's thoughts to the methods and techniques of visual presentation. The picture itself has been discarded. The work forefronts disturbances in the transmission of the message – scratches, dirt, poor focus – everything that modern technology tries to avoid. By slowing down the speed and through repetitions, the mute, monochromatic, microscopic world of Passage becomes a magical, unique record. Is this the first or the last motion picture of the universe?

“In photography I’m interested in the small, almost invisible things that construct an image, like the edge or border of an image – that of which is left outside the frame or is only partly visible in the frame.” says Sini Pelkki.

Pelkki’s photographs Simultaneous Closure (2006/2009) and Reminiscence (2006/2009) are moments captured from a child's perspective The viewer is presented with botanical garden, but the things we consider important seem to be framed out of the images or the whole image is skewed. The photograph Simultaneous Closure shows us a lying female figure looking away from the camera, a common motif in Pelkki’s oeuvre. However, she is cropped arbitrarily out of the image and – oops – our attention is suddenly elsewhere.

Also Roots, Bridges (2008/2009) is an image of a woman, that unsuccessfully attempts to be part of the surrounding landscape. The dark-haired woman who is dressed in black is the artist herself. She lies on a sofa with her face turned away. Natural light falling from the left-hand side of the frame, reflections on a vase, a chequered floor as well as the compositional nature of the situation bring to mind Vermeer and other masters of Dutch painting. At the same time the room is flattened to an almost two dimensional arrangement, where small details and objects, such as a light switch, grab our focus. The lying figure becomes one of the objects in the composition.

Pelkki’s magical wand shakes our perception of reality in the upper left-hand side of the image, where our field of vision is partly blocked by a reflection that, teasing the eye shows, us some of the objects in the room. The trick has succeeded.

Erja Salo
The writer is educational curator at the Finnish Museum of Photography.