How could we step through a door-way if it is not a void? A locked door will awake our curiosity- what might be there behind a door.
Empty paper, canvas or space seems to include similar unlimited possibilities.
In 1981, I became acquainted with Japanese culture through the exhibition Ma Time-Space in Japan
organised by Helsinki City Art Museum. The exhibition showed how the coincidental conceptualization of time and space is the most important element that distinguishes Japan´ artistic expression from the West.
Time and space were not measured by different serialization.
Rather, in Japan, both space nad time have been measured in terms of intervals.
There are various interpretations of the MA concept but it is not possible to describe this term fully here. The most important matter for me was to realize the void around object.
Emptiness or void has an important role in Eastern culture, as this concept relates to how phenomena and environments are observed.
Our western culture perceives surroundings by an object, but in Japan, such concepts on the perception of the void can have many levels of meaning.
I have grown to believe that in Finland, our synonym for the void could be the silence in our outdoor nature. I have experienced time and space as a challenge and such deep concept continuously gives me more and new levels for artistic expression.
The message of my art works could be describe as visual questions of time and space. I call the images and art that I make “objects of silence”, which is meant to offer an opposite response today’s hectic and materialistic way of life.
In today´s busy life, an intimate space loses its clarity, while exterior space loses its void, unfortunately, the void being raw materials of the possibility of being. We are banished from the realm possibility.
Kari Laitinen
Bibliography:
Void –in villages and towns, in houses and objects, Tapio Periäinen , Alvar Aalto Museum, Jyväskylä, 1998, ISBN 951-664-014-1.
The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard, Boston, 1994, ISBN 0-8070-6473-4,
(First published in French under the title “La poétique de l´espace” , 1958.