Antti Laitinen: Chiming Forest

Antti Laitinen (b. 1975) is an artist based in Somero, Finland, who makes art from materials drawn from his immediate surroundings. In recent years, he has focused on transforming, dismantling and reassembling trees and forest landscapes in his work.

Natural environments often serve as a starting point for Laitinen’s practice, supplying him with both materials and ideas. Yet, as he notes himself, nature is not necessarily the subject of his work. In addition to installations, he also explores his themes through video and photography.

In some of his earlier projects, Laitinen has examined the repetitiveness of physical labour and human impact on the environment. He has, for instance, dismantled an entire tree in an attempt to put it back together, or tried to move a lake using only buckets. Laitinen describes his works as physical experiments, in which the process takes precedence over the outcome.

Antti Laitinen: Chiming Forest forms part of the InCollection exhibition series by EMMA and Saastamoinen Foundation. Each year, a work by a visionary contemporary artist is commissioned for the series. Laitinen is the eighth artist to be featured.