Salla Tykkä

We are delighted to host the UK premiere of Finnish artist Salla Tykkä’s new film, Zoo (2006), which will be shown alongside her acclaimed Trilogy (Lasso, Cave and Thriller).

Salla Tykkä’s work is heavily influenced by mass media imagery. Although the characters and experiences she presents are fictional, her practice can be understood as an exercise in extended self-portraiture. Each film explores emotional states, without the use of dialogue and often accompanied by music that shapes the mood of each setting. The films are charged with strong and sometimes disturbing visual metaphors, which develop as the main character moves through various scenes and settings, sometimes as an active agent, other times as a passive though emotionally engaged observer.

As Tykkä’s work often lies within a dreamlike moment, the flow of time in her films seems to change with the emotional state of her subjects. Only pieces of the whole picture are shown, leaving the rest of the story for individual reflection. Given the works’ openly ambiguous narrative structure, you are challenged to interpret them in a non-conventional way.

Zoo follows a young female protagonist as she walks through a deserted zoo, peering at the animals in different enclosures and occasionally photographing them, subtly conveying a sense of independence, intelligence and a mounting state of anxiety. She looks at the animals; they look back, mimicking the situation of a beautiful woman in a male-dominated society.

The camera follows and circles her with thrilling ease and increasing insistence, to become like a second character. Its freedom of movement almost matches that of the eye itself, and especially the character’s increasingly restless glances. The soundtrack provides melodramatic music, and frequent cuts to an underwater game reveal a dark world where the players plunge and tussle like seals in an aquarium competing for food.

Salla Tykkä’s work gained international notice at the 2001 Venice Biennale where she presented Lasso. She has since had exhibitions at Galerie Yvon Lambert, New York; the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Chapter would like to thank Galerie Yvon Lambert for their assistance.

Pressetext

Salla Tykkä
Zoo and The Trilogy