Award winner 2007
Markus Kåhre
ENCOUNTERS READY TO HAPPEN
Pictures say more than a thousand words. But Markus Kåhre's works avoid pictoriality. The nature of the works cannot be stored in images, nor can it be condensed into words. They thrive in expectant silence. We might speak of sculptures or of installations, but what stays in mind from these pieces is not their materiality. This appears to be something that the artist wants to obliterate from his works, without giving up on the demands of aestheticality. By removing elements the artist prepares the viewer for what is crucial: the encounter in the work.
Kåhre's works seek to do what is called attaining the impossible. A multitude of riddles seem to reside within their outwardly apparently simple structures. Concealed within them is the gaze of Orpheus, the gaze that, when he is bringing Eurydice back from the underworld, is what loses her. You cannot take the object of the gaze along with you. Kåhre's works exist in memory traces. Those traces can be recognised when fresh in the surprised faces of those who have been to see the work. The merest hint of an instant can also be called art. In the encounters that Kåhre sets up, the meaning is condensed into a fleeting moment, before vanishing from the stage.
Kåhre does not give his works titles. All that is left where the title would be is a dash. This highlights the indivisibility of the looking experience. So, who or what does the viewer encounter in the works? The work or the artist? The answer is found close to hand, in the very person who is asking the question. When you are inside the aura created by the work, it can feel like an empty hole in your chest, like a lost memory image or a fleeing shadow. The zone of experience that Kåhre has created comes close to that of an experimental theatre performance in which spectators find themselves onstage. With our permission the work generates an illusion and then finds us within itself. In turns. The reactive nature of these participatory works suspends the compulsion to communicate. Kåhre's works can be described by both the laconicness of their visual elements and their wordless generosity. They create a space for the unconditionality of experience, and for the joy of discovery.
Leevi Haapala