I continued working with envelopes. First, I cut and formed collages from papers and patterns that referred to space. I further combined the collages with words, sentences and signs. I think that in this way the connection between image and word forms a speech between two different origins. The works lead thoughts in a new direction, forming a communication that creates contradictions between verbal and visual information.
Ville Kumpulainen’s exhibition Home of Absence is woven with nested spaces and meanings that are revealed layer by layer. The exhibition was inspired by the ideas of French philosopher Georges Perec about spaces and their multiple meanings – especially the spatial experience constructed through everyday life, memory and perception. Kumpulainen’s works are constructed as stages, where things that have remained unprocessed are given visual form. His work deals with the structure of speechlessness and distrust: the past shines forth as fragments within the images and in the layers built on top of them.
Kumpula is interested in how images, materials and objects create a dialogue between physical presence, spatial perception and past photographs. He collects and photographs different spaces from books, magazines, guides and archives, as well as from his own environment. From these elements he builds collages that combine forgotten visual realities and surprising juxtapositions.
The collage-like structure of the works draws out internal landscapes, like floor plans from memory that seeks a new route over the old. The artists feel that the corners repeated in the images act as shelters, suggesting spatial withdrawal and the need for reconstruction. In Kumpulainen’s work, layering appears as a way to move forward: a new layer forms a space into which it is possible to move.
The ensemble on display at Hippolyte combines collages, plaster reliefs, photograms and found objects. Kumpulainen applies his own geometric rules in his works and cheats gravity by modifying space and objects for the sake of photography. The closed two-dimensional space of photography enables the construction of one’s own spatial realities. It opens up different places for the eyes and the mind to immerse themselves in.
Ville Kumpulainen (b. 1988, Rovaniemi) is a visual artist from Helsinki who approaches spaces and things experimentally through image-making. He examines visual realities through photographs, words, objects and archive images. Kumpulainen graduated as a visual artist from the Turku Academy of Arts in 2016 and from the Master’s Programme in Photography from Aalto University in 2019. The German publishing house Hatje Cantz published his book Out of Sight in 2017. Kumpulainen’s works have been exhibited in several solo and group exhibitions in Finland and abroad.
