Sankarin arki-The Hero's Everyday Life

The documentation feels real and sincere, but small absurd details create cracks in the illusion. Although the overall impression is even brutalistic, it is not provocative as a rule and the aesthetic charge remains laconically elegant.
Soinio makes use of both a satirical artificial light that gives the images an intimate illumination, and a cold flash that makes the images almost intrusive. The images are often mundane in subject matter, as if taken on the spur of the moment without much staging. This gives the images a sense of authenticity. Overall, the aesthetics of Soinio’s photographs emphasise emotion and lived experience rather than technical perfection. It brings the viewer close to the atmosphere of the moment being photographed and allows the viewer to be part of the event itself, not just an outside observer.
Soinio has a knack for seeing beauty and meaning in seemingly insignificant things. His images may show used tea bags, a countertop or himself carrying a stack of books. Often a single image focuses on its subject in a way that emphasises the moment and the form, but in the exhibition as a whole the images indulge in a dialogue between the sublime and the banal. The exhibition does not tell a story, rather it is a stream of consciousness about moments and place, the self and its experience. While the rhythmically suspended series of images might tempt one into a cartoonish reading, it quickly proves futile. Each image stands alone with its own mood and the whole is a series of overlapping moods. The exhibition is a strongly saturated image of a world filled with everyday life.
Veikko Halmetoja, gallerist

Kari Soinio (b. 1962) is a photographer who graduated from the University of Art and Design and has worked as a visual artist since the 1980s.  His works are in the collections of Kiasma, HAM Helsinki Art Museum and the Museum of Photography, among others. His joint exhibition with Hannele Rantala was shown last year at the Art Hall in Seinäjoki.