15 – 23 March 2025
MUU Helsinki Contemporary Art Centre
Cable Factory, Tallberginkatu 1 C, Helsinki
Open: Tue–Fri 12:00–17:00 and Sat-Su 12:00–16:00

@muu_helsinki

@zalvesen

@waltersallinen

Metropolitan Blinds is an audiovisual sculpture and exhibition by visual artist Alexander Salvesen and sound artist Walter Sallinen, exploring our divided relationship with nature.

The multi-channel video and sound installation, equipped with a motorized venetian blind, investigates parallel realities created by double exposure and the individual’s role as a boundary between two opposing worlds. The blinds symbolize a conscious decision to turn a blind eye. What is revealed within us when we close our eyes? What seeps through ignorance? The work delves into the complex human desire to possess nature and the power structures entangled in it.

The motorized venetian blind function as a dissecting, unifying, and transparent kinetic element, allowing the projected video material on the blinds to appear alternately whole and fragmented into horizontal lines. Similarly, the spatial soundscape of the piece is dissected into spectral slits, moving between recognizable soundscapes and digitally deconstructed abstraction. This interplay creates an audiovisual dialogue between sound and video.

Exhibited for the first time, the work is part of the same audiovisual body of work that began in the autumn of 2019, inspired by a residency in French Guiana and the impressions it generated. The exhibition also features Snårigheten att förhålla sig till, an art book by Salvesen and Sallinen completed in 2024, containing collaborative works and texts from 2019–2024. The book’s core material was created in French Guiana and later edited during the pandemic years in Finland. The duo’s artistic practice is based on an interdisciplinary documentation of the environment, allowing the book to be approached as a visual poetry collection, travelogue, exhibition catalogue, or something in between.

Since 2018, Alexander Salvesen and Walter Sallinen have collaborated on various projects, often using media art as their primary form of expression. Their works have previously been exhibited in galleries and art festivals across Finland. Their first joint solo exhibition, Throbserving, was held at Gallery 3H+K in Pori last autumn, showcasing their collaborative works that includes text, image, and sound from 2019–2024.

Alexander Salvesen (b. 1990) is a Finnish Helsinki based artist. He works without prejudice with a wide range of different media from light to drawing, and from media art to sculpture and photography. Currently he is interested in the complexity of our perception, the puzzling concept of time and our obsession with consumption, destruction and travel in an age of mass extinction. His works have been exhibited in museums, galleries and a wide range of events in Finland and abroad.  

Walter Sallinen is a Helsinki-based composer and sound artist. Sallinen’s artistic practice explores the potential of interdisciplinarity both as a compositional tool and as a key for unforeseen collaborative concepts. In recent years, Sallinen has deepened his interest in creating sonic states as reflections of an all too hyper-normalised reality

alexandersalvesen.com

www.waltersallinen.com

Guided tour
Helsinki Art Walk tour – Sunday 16 March 2025 at 13:30. Artists Alexander Salvesen and Walter Sallinen are present at the exhibition. Guide for the English language exhibition tour will be Jane Hughes.

Artist talk and screening
March 22, 4:00 PM, MUU Helsinki Contemporary Art Centre
On Saturday, March 22 at 4:00 PM, the artists will hold a talk featuring a screening of their previous works, Throbserver I (2020) and Throbserver II (Eperua Falcata) (2024). The total duration is approximately 60 minutes.

Thank you,
Niklas Pöllönen, Noora Juppi, Sasu Korander

With support from
Konstsamfundet
VISEK