Sous Les Etoiles Gallery is pleased to present "Not above a whisper," featuring work by Scandinavian photographers Susanne Wellm and Eeva Hannula. An opening reception with the artists will be held on Thursday, May 7th, 6-8pm; an Artists Talk will also take place at the gallery on Monday, May 11th, 7-8pm.
Selections from Wellm’s series Inner Landscapes and Hannula’s The Structure of Uncertainty highlight the nebulous relationship between past and present, real and imagined. The photographers compose visual poems and stories from the extraordinary vantage point of the unconscious through personal, found and historic archive materials, painting, drawing, and film still photography.
In her series Inner Landscapes, Wellm explores the everyday world in serene color, revealing potential links of real or imaginary stories between objects and persons, the latter notable in their absence. In the artist’s Red Phone, the potential drama of the isolated phone is soothed by a wash of soft lighting, suggesting a radiant harmony and balance in the ordinary, if only quieted. Whispers of narrative are gently echoed throughout subsequent images, a meditative arc that quietly pulses beneath the surface of the image and the viewer’s own “inner landscape.” Hannula’s series The Structure of Uncertainty similarly ripples with private meaning as one image connects to another, as if relaying a hitherto hidden story that is recognizable but yet unknown. Often working in diptych, the artist surprises with intuitive marks and experimentation with vivid color, imparting the uncanny and surreal.
Susanne Wellm (b. 1965) is originally a printmaker, educated at the Danish School of Arts and Crafts at the Institute for Unica. She lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her work includes various photographic techniques, such as Polaroid, Super 8 film, digital photography and collage. She has exhibited broadly in Denmark, Japan, China, Finland, and the US, including solo shows at Blue Sky Gallery (Portland, OR) and The National Museum of Photography in Copenhagen. She is represented in several public and private collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, TX), Portland Art Museum (OR), Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (Japan) and Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (Austin, TX). Her series Inner Landscapes was published into a photo book by Kehrer Verlag.
Eeva Hannula (b. 1983) is an emerging photographer currently studying for her MA in photography at Aalto University School of Art, Design and Architecture in Helsinki, Finland. She explores psychoanalytical method and the concept of Freud’s uncanny in her series The Structure of Uncertainty, selections of which have appeared in group shows at The Finnish Museum of Photography, Les Rencontres d’Arles (Paris), and Fellehus Nordic Embassies (Berlin), among others. In 2013, she was awarded a grant from the Arts Council of Finland and selected as part of Foam Magazine’s Talent Issue.
