Marko Vuokola may be working at Korppoo, or in Texas, or in the Audi salesrooms in Helsinki's Herttoniemi. The interesting issues are present everywhere.

Since 1989, Marko Vuokola has participated in dozens of exhibitions in Finland, the Nordic countries and elsewhere in Europe, the United States and Australia. He held his first solo exhibition at Galerie Anhava 1992.

The Seventh Wave consists of pairs of images with precisely the same cropping and angle of view, thus unlike, for example, stereoscopic photographs in which changes to the angle of view creates the illusion of three-dimensionality. The camera is on its tripod. First, I take a picture, followed by another one sometime later. I have wanted to keep the interval between the photographs varied, "unscientific" and even indefinite. Two seconds or six hours can pass between the moments of taking the pictures. In some of the pairs, the difference can be seen easily, while in others it is less obvious. Even the blink of an eye is time enough for many atoms to revolve, grasshoppers to leap and glimmers of light to change place.

When photographing for The Seventh Wave, I placed the camera in front of the subject and let it note and record the view. I accepted the results as such. I used my father's old Hasselblad Superwide 6x6 camera from 1956 - the same brand that was the first camera on the Moon. I photographed a great deal, with highly different views and situations as subjects. In the final selections, I sought an open and even surprising combination.

In the film "Papillon" the prisoners trying to escape from Devil's Island wait on the beach for the seventh wave. It is the largest one, which should help them get away. With the title The Seventh Wave I refer to both expecting something better and greater and the great, eternal and even romantic cycles of life. I also wish to refer to the moment and place in which we are now; in fact we have nothing else. And the fact that this moment has already passed.

The Seventh Wave - Window was photographed in Big Bend National Park, Texas. The location is the "Window", a well-known site for viewing sunsets -a sight that HAS TO BE photographed. I am fascinated by the idea of thousands of photographs taken of this same place. It represents an archetype of the landscape and the view.

The Seventh Wave - New was photographed at an Audi dealership in Helsinki's Herttoniemi. I took pictures in several car salesrooms and these models seemed to be suitably neutral, conventional new cars. The space and the changes in its lighting were well suited to my purposes. When I choose as my subject something new that will soon seem old, I do not address time only as the interval between two exposures. This work matures like good wine. Looking at it, one can consider how it will look for instance 20 years from now.

The Seventh Wave - Sky was photographed in Marfa, Texas. I took a great number of photographs on my trip. Especially sunsets and sunrises. After spending a day in Marfa studying Donald Judd's work, I could not but aim my camera at the wide-open deep blue sky of Texas. I felt that was it! There is an interval of a few hours between the pictures.

The Seventh Wave - Marfa was literally photographed in Marfa. The bright light of the setting sun creates a flare effect in the lens of the camera. The attractions of Marfa include the "Marfa Lights", a mysterious phenomenon appearing in the sky.

The Seventh Wave - Jurmo was photographed on a grey winter afternoon on the island of Jurmo (Korppoo) in the Southwestern Archipelago National Park in Finland. It captures the movement of small waves and water. How large is the seventh wave?

Time is often at the centre of my work. The exhibition features two works in which time is present as movement: Flash and Blue Movie II. Blue Movie II is blue in colour and takes movement as its theme. In a way, it combines my works "Method" (e.g. Museum of Contemporary Art /Studio N 1994) and "Blue Movie" (e.g. Anhava 2003). The flat screens are blue, the colour is the standard that appears on the screen when there is no transmitted signal. On one screen, a line one pixel high moves from the bottom to the top and vice versa, and on the other screen a line one pixel wide moves from left to right and from right to left. I attach to this work ideas such as that of the centre of a circle, which also applies to lenses. I think the centre exists only as an idea. Lines in inexorable movement can be conceived as tangentially passing the absolute centre, but it is impossible to stop the lines at the centre. "Blue movie" refers to a film of light erotic tone. At first sight, this work does not seem to contain any kind of image, not to mention anything particularly entertaining or erotic. But all things are relative. Looking at these works, Pontus Kyander noted aptly and amusingly:
" What's the difference between an artwork and a screensaver? Not much."

Flash takes its title from the effect that is produced when a video camera is set to take consecutive still images at a chosen tempo. The movement of the subject can be divided and perceived as a continuum of still images. Approximately three minutes long, this loop repeats hundreds of consecutive stills. Flash is an installation employing two projections, both of which have identical visual material.. Flash was photographed at Nauvo in the Southwestern Archipelago National Park.

Been there, seen it, done that contains three sandblasted lenses on a clear glass shelf resting on a steel structure. For me, the lens is a symbol of human curiosity and the thirst for knowledge. It is also an unbelievable optic invention, present in everything that has to do with images and seeing. In a highly concrete manner for example in cameras, in which light is directed through the lens onto a recording surface. The properties of a double-convex glass disc (lens) include the focal point (centre) through which the rays of light pass. Sight is based on the lens; seeing is the perception and interpretation of light passing through the lens of the eye.

"Been there, seen it, done that" is a phrase cynically noting something as seen and found to be uninteresting. Here, I refer to the endless desire to rush from one experience to another, although the essential can also be grasped by halting - and specifically by doing so. This work might also tell of the overabundance of visual stimuli and its numbing effect.

Flare #1, Flare #2 and Flare #3 are three separate works. Flare #4 is a diptych. In these works I have recorded passages from films showing the lens flare effect. This effect comes a bout when the camera is aimed too directly towards a bright source of light, when the light begins to be reflected in the lenses and to break down into the colours of the spectrum, often in round configurations. In principle, this is an undesired effect, but it is also used as a special effect for instance in television commercials and computer games. I recently saw a car commercial in which someone was driving a car on the deck of ship in rain and stormy weather, and, how else, the lens flare appeared to create the mood, even though there was hardly any sunshine. Even the Photoshop program has the lens flare effect, which can be added to any image of one's choices. The film is a series of stills creating the impression of movement. Following my method I have chosen from the narrative thus created a single moment and created a new story. The selected images display the flare effect in red, green and blue (RGB). The paired images of Flare #4 are actually a short film of two frames. The main aspect is light, the relationship with time and the narrative.

Marko Vuokola, 2007

A Scene of Gazes

At the present exhibition Vuokola displays a collection of works having in common viewing and perception – the observation of the world. Characteristically, he does not present a personal view of the world, in which observation would combine with mind. Vuokola addresses the ways that constitute seeing. Seeing has become the theme of art; instrumental and programmed, it has become a "narrator’s voice". This is not to say, however, that pictures created in this way would be preordained. Activating in the image-making process both the laws of nature and the chaotic order of nature itself, Vuokola achieves results both surprising and fascinating, yet also beautiful in a very fresh way. The images are made with a film camera, a video camera and the technical movement of painting, both via them and with their aid. The artist decides what is depicted or done and where and how this takes place; he times the recording and duration of the images, decides on the presentation of the results down to the smallest details.

In recent years, the history of modernism has also been discussed in terms of a history of the gaze, and the ways in which it passes on a manner of seeing the world, a kind of visual worldview. It has been observed how, in disrupting Renaissance perspective, so-called avant-garde art and literature chose a different path than photography and cinema, where the "eye of the camera" relied on seeing based on perspective, thus conforming to the traditional conception of how the world appears in reality. Where the visual arts experimented with various models of seeing the world, the visual worlds of science and also popular culture, relied on the traditional model of perspective. (Jonathan Crary: Techniques of the Observer).

As photography, video and cinema offer increasingly interesting and complex opportunities for visual expression they have established their position among the visual arts. They have also introduced the debate on the image as document, which is typical of contemporary art. Discussion on the document and its special visual features is highly interesting and multi-faceted, as its role is being undermined by the world of digitized imagery and the techniques of image manipulation..

As a visual genre, the document operates simultaneously in the areas of both icon and index, the two traditional classifications of pictures, thus being kind of hybrid. An icon is a picture representing something, while an index classifies the physical signs associated with a thing or event. The photographic document contains features of both. A typical icon is, for example, a figurative landscape or portrait, while a classic indexical sign could be a footprint in the sand showing that someone has been there. A documentary photograph is ultimately indexical, for it serves to tell that a camera has been at the location and a sign thereof has been imprinted on the film. The depicted thing or event, in turn, is a figurative image, which in contemporary photography is highly multi-layered, with a wide array of possible styles and conventions of presentation. These means may be associated with the technique of photography and printing as much as with the choice of subject and whether life is presented as seen or whether the photographer becomes involved, or whether the course of events is solely the photographer’s own narrative.

Vuokola’s pictures of the night sky are made with long exposures, making it possible to photograph in the dark as the film registers an event of long duration into a kind of temporally stratified picture. The resulting image is beyond the photographer’s control, and is rather a product of the collaboration of continually changing light and the sensitivity of the film. Vuokola turns his camera towards the cloudless heavens and steps aside to observe the same heavens with his own eyes. He also sees the aeroplanes in the sky as fast phenomena of light and follows, for instance, a ship at night. The print shows the movement of the stars as small curved lines of light. The movements of the aeroplanes are distinct and graceful lines resembling the meandering ornaments of Art Nouveau. The movement of the ship is a wide array of lines. These images entail the magic of making the unseen visible, which in the early days of photography was used, for example, to present the movements of men and animals, i.e. events in movement that the human eye cannot distinguish. The cooperation of eye and camera has opened up new areas of seeing with an important influence on our way of comprehending the world.

While pictures are documents with traces of past movement and light, they are also icons presenting the landscape of our age – things taking place so slowly or so fast that our eyes fail to record them. Metaphorically, their meaning also lies in the fact that they tell of the continuous movement and different speeds amidst which we live. This meaning is important in the present worldview of art, and its representation appears to be one of the main objectives of contemporary art.

Besides images of the night sky, Vuokola also presents video films with the programming of camera movement as their theme. Particularly fascinating is a combination of two video films portraying a typical Finnish lake scene in the summer. The camera moves gently on the waves and there are summer clouds in the sky, telling the viewer that the lake is not quite calm. This film was recorded with a camera attached to a tripod placed on a freely moving, light raft made of polystyrene. The artist followed the recording from a nearby boat. Both monitors show the same film, but at a different pace. Watching these films, the viewer, too, feels like a cork floating on the water, as the capricious movements of the picture and its random angles follow the chaotic rhythm of the wind. The ordinariness of the landscape is transformed into a new experience, with new angles of view and a new experience of movement that becomes almost physical.

The other video piece consists of two films shown on two adjacent monitors. Both films feature a simple tumbler of water, familiar from Vuokola’s earlier works. In one film a hand holding a spoon is stirring the water with a regular revolving movement seen directly from the front. In the other video, the movement is formed by the motion of the camera around the glass with the surrounding room reflected as somewhat ponderous suspended, soft-contoured images on the surface of the water and the glass. In both films, the normal speed has been slowed down slightly, making it easier for the viewer to focus on the visual stages and details of the event. In all its simplicity, this video diptych reveals the two ways in which a camera tells a story; in one the movement is within the picture, and in the other the camera moves around its subject, thus creating a new narrative.

The photographic diptych, a reconstruction of a still from Robert Bresson’s film "Pickpocket", is based on an analysis of an image taken from the film and its construction anew, the representation of representation and thus the following of the traces of a multi-layered gaze and the use of the camera. This image is also an instance of "pictorial theft", as the artist appropriates or cannibalizes, a picture taken by another artist, but – as far as is known – this was no longer an image from Bresson’s movie but a picture taken by a photographer during the filming, in turn published in a book on cinema. With reference to the image published in the book, Vuokola has reproduced the situation as accurately as possible. This immediately brings to mind the question of whose gaze and seeing are involved here? Is it Bresson, who made the film, the still photographer who recorded the filming, or Vuokola? All three are stratified in this image by Marko Vuokola.

In addition to photographs and videos the exhibition also presents two sheets of aluminium painted yellow and faced with glass to emphasize their already smooth shiny surface, painted without being touched by hand. Photographs of the same size as the aluminium sheets were taken of them, replicas of a kind in altered technique. The photographs differ in minor respects from the original paintings and upon closer inspection the surface of the prints reveals discrepancies and tones lacking in the mechanically painted sheets of aluminium. The aluminium plate and the photograph are presented as two diptychs, which, however, are only apparently identical. In the exhibition, their glass surfaces pass on an image of the surrounding space, the things going on there, and the viewers engaged in viewing, all as a continuous "reflection". The intense yellow, however, "marks" everything around the piece, and thus the reflection does not correspond to reality but is "coloured" yellow. The yellow reflecting surface also returns the gaze to the viewer, while focusing attention on the differences between the variously programmed gazes of all the images on show and the recording of what is seen on the one hand, and the present moment, in which we stand amidst the movements and randomness of life, on the other. This implies a situation in which everything is unfinished and not registered in an image, and will not be registered except for a fleeting moment in the viewer’s mind.

The models of viewing applied by Vuokola in his works can also be analysed with reference to ways of seeing recently developed in the study of so-called visual culture. Peter de Bolla distinguishes three different ways of seeing. The first is associated with the verb "to gaze", implying a concentrated viewing. The second way of seeing is to glance, a quick view, while the third is to look, to see with thought. The gaze burrows deep into the image, organizing the visual field to generate meanings. The glance quickly scans the surfaces, enjoying their variation. The glance is said identify with the field of view, being defined by the virtual spaces in which it moves. Bolla’s third variant, the look, attaches the element of reasoning to seeing and the viewer’s consciousness of the eye’s ability to see, and perhaps also an awareness of the limitations of the world as seen by the human eye. This form of seeing is also described as oscillation between the gaze and the glance, with the eye moving between the depth of the gaze and its associated reasoning, texture and deepness (from Stephen Melville and Bill Readings (ed.) ‘Vision and Textuality’).

Vuokola’s works at the present exhibition apply all these forms of seeing. The long exposures slowly construct the image, adding layers and depth, the viewing of which calls for the time and thought of the gaze. The video camera floating on the lake represents a typical glance, not only looking at the surface of the water but also steered and defined by its movements. The reflections on the yellow painted surfaces can be associated with the look, both observing the reflected image on the glass facing the paintings (including the viewer) and addressing this picture: the presence of self in a situation that is an exhibition, i.e. having the explicit social function of seeing. This situation is also an opportunity to approach the internal models of viewing of all the works on show, and the images created by the various types of seeing.

The internal dialogue of Marko Vuokola’s imagery between various kinds of movement and the patterns of signs marked out by them constitutes a new kind of image, in which the traces of technically achieved movement is analogous with the eternal motion of the earth and the forces of nature. The long exposure and the ability to register movement unlike the human eye bring forth signs of movement that know to exist and function before our eyes but whose forms and properties and their poetry of randomness can also be shown by a photograph and the video image.