Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Parallel Worlds
A compelling psychological intrigue unfolds in the dark enclosure of screens when suddenly the narrative presents itself as object; a spatial and temporal thing, or physical tool, that splits, disappears and spirals back on itself. Images and events fade in and out of sync from every side; sharp sudden noises startle from behind; spreading waves of sound vibrations are real physical contact. Exquisite vignettes of people, animals and nature regulate, or perhaps ir-regulate, attention, alternating the stimulation of distraction with a duration of pleasure.
The eye wants to dwell, but curiosity wants to keep up.
Painting and film.
In themselves, none of these filmic devices are new to the genre of multiple-screen installation art, but there are very few artists who can match Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s ability to treat narrative as a visual and spatial object; and to synthesise the mediums of film and painting. She is perhaps the Gerhard Richter of the moving image. Narrative is acutely visual in her work—it has a palette, texture and viscosity. The extraordinary freshness of her native Finnish landscape inspires the scintillating quality of light we expect in Monet, Turner or even Australia’s own Elioth Gruner (1882-1939). Colour is Titian meets Rothko. Narrative literally moves as it spreads, cuts and reverses around the viewer and demands a physical as well as mental following. The screens, script, colour, sound and light all work together to engulf senses and intellect in moving images that perform as paintings and mix film’s enthralling suspension of disbelief and disembodied spectatorship with Albertian single point perspective. Different ways of seeing spark off each other, not blending but re-mixing and revitalising the cognitive filters.
Ahtila’s most recent survey exhibition of works