Introduction

On the occasion of their third exhibition at Esther Schipper, Grönlund-Nisunen are showing two new works dealing with the visualization of motion, energy and space.

Tommi Grönlund and Petteri Nisunen have been working together since 1993 in the fields of architecture, art and music. With their simple formal idiom and their use of geometric forms such as line, plane and circle, the artists combine aspects of kinetic art with references to modernism. In their works an experimental artistic practice in the course of which materials and techniques take shape. The artists build all the individual components themselves and use the exhibition context to develop test situations whose results remain unpredictable. The use of low-tech material is part of this artistic approach belonging to the formal parameter of experimental electronic music.

In the gallery’s darkened main space stand twelve glass tubes supported by metal structures, arranged in a line across the width of the room. Liquid Diagram (2009) consists of a group of four works presented here together in a large installation created specially for the exhibition. Each work consists of three glass tubes mounted on round bottomed flasks filled one quarter full with distilled water and connected by a system of switches. An electrical heating element controls the air temperature inside the flasks. The flasks are lit from below, making the rising and falling of the water level visible. At the same time, a poetic element is introduced into the technical process. The system is a sensitive one which reacts not only to the different heat states, but also, like a barometer, to uncontrollable fluctuations of pressure outside the unit.

In the smaller room, a stainless-steel wheel rotates on its axis halfway between floor and ceiling. The title Cyclon (2009) refers to the motion of the object, which is driven by a small motor. The movement produces a draft.

The prints 50 circles (2007) and 100 circles (2007) are part of a series of five black-and-white screen prints on paper in a limit edition of twelve. They illustrate interferences created by the overlapping of simple, graphic elements such as straight and curved lines.