2.6. — 25.6.2023

The sense of a space arises from encounters with architecture, light, sound, materials, and the surface textures, which can be felt and observed by different senses. It is an intimate and bodily experience that is special in each space. Many of these sensory experiences may remain on an unconscious level, although atmospheric, mood-sensing visualization happens faster than detailed, conscious observation.

The starting point of Inka Bell‘s exhibition Shift is the movement, layers of time, and subtle changes felt by the artist at Forum Box. While working, these observations were transformed into new sensations inspired by the process. The whole, which started from concrete spatial elements, aims for ever wider unconscious levels through the works.

The exhibition consists of paper sculptures in which change and time appear as movement and rhythmicity between materials, colors, light, shapes, and weight: unique and clearly defined, back and forth and flickering or almost imperceptible. In the new exhibition, the repeated sharp and straight angles recurrent in Bell’s works, which are often limited to a rectangular shape, occasionally soften towards rounder and smoothier shapes. The apparent lightness of the paper is counterbalanced by the weight of the metal frames that limit the movement.

For the viewer, perceiving these events requires physical participation and changing one’s location. You have to reach, crouch, lean and twist around the works. Only the sense of movement makes the changes visible.

Inka Bell’s works escape verbalization or external meanings. What is essential instead are the sensory spaces they create between the viewer, the work, place and time.

Riikka Thitz, curator