'UP AND DOWN / HIGH AND LOW'
Project ‘Up and Down / High and Low” consist of a video and slide projections filmed and photographed from the highest and lowest sediments of India and Europe during traveling the high Indian Himalaya mountains and sinking deep in the Negra caves of Andalusia Spain.
This b/w docu has been presented at NIV Art Center in Delhi, 2019.
TURKU MOUNTAINS
“Turku Mountains” is a video work where a still image of a melting snow heap is slowly changing from a positive image into a negative.
Between these changing fields, the gap between light and dark, there is a fraction of a second, the projected image is completely grey.
When you still see the after image of the snow heap in the grey landscape, the negative already sets in.
Turku Mountains is a video animation that has been presented as an HD projection in a larger installation setting. Duration is a 5-minute loop, 2016.
Every now and then during the winter months, the traffic in the Finnish city of Turku comes to a halt. The heavy storms that arrive from the north are covering the entire town under crippling multitudes of snow. At night, the citizens’ dreams get disturbed and mixed with the growl of snow ploughs
working their way through the white matter. The pace of the town slows down; time stretches and freezes to a standstill. Big trucks transport thousands and thousands of cubic feet of snow to the outskirts of the town. There it is dumped as any unwanted waste would be. In the summer, the heaps
are still there. Tightly packed gigantic mountains melt very slowly, gradually revealing hidden treasures and trash. Odd shapes appear as the sun heats up the gravel and dust.It is an archive of the wintry city we are watching, absurdly persisting and preserving its melancholy contents.
Even in the autumn, it is still there, diminished and powerless,unhurriedly returning its contents to the ground.
FLAT
In the video work ‘Flat’, we see a 360-degree rotating image of a miniature model of a Tokyo apartment building. The model is not only rotating but is also changing from a sharp focus to a diffused image of the building. The video ‘Flat’ is one of the works I made as my artist in residence period in 2012 in Youkobo Art Space, Tokyo. During this time, I was inspired by and studying the Japanese art of the ‘Saikai’ and the ‘Bonkai’, the art of making miniature landscapes. This work can be seen as a contemporary ‘Saikai’. The video is presented as an HD projection on a black wall. Duration is 6 min, 2015.
CURTAIN
Video installation 'Curtain' with two projections, with a 24-hour interval recording from a window with curtains in a small apartment in Tokyo, Japan. In a basin, water is dripping from the ceiling every 40 seconds and makes circles in the water. Dimensions 600 cm w x 240 h x 200 cm d.
Presented at Stroom, The Hague, 2009.
DUST (THE DIRTY ORNAMENT)
“Architecture has, with some difficulty, liberated itself from the ornament, but it has not liberated itself from the fear of the ornament, stated John Summerson in 1941 as a comment on the modernistic architecture that strived towards an even stricter and purer depiction of space.
The style demanded economically efficient and simplified architecture, but paradoxically, a structure stripped of all decoration turned out to be impractical and complicated to accomplish; a tower ends inevitably in a point, and the twist of a staircase is ornamentation.
Despite the sacrifices, the advanced architecture had to be protected against the decadence of the ornament. In the video work “Dust,” the ornament is concretely made of dirt and dust, degenerating materials that must be banned from our lives and surroundings. The work ‘Dust’ has been shown in different Museums, Art Centers, and galleries around the globe. The work was bought by the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, in 2012.
It's permanently displayed at the headquarters of the parliament.
NAMES - HORSES
Names , 1 to 1 scale horse made of wood, plastic and video projection.
Jump into the Unknown, Nine Dragon Heads, 56th Venice Biennale, Italy 2015
MOTH HOUSE
Moth House, the work that yielded the title of the artist’s 2010 exhibition in Stroom Den Haag, was inspired by a story that Vink overheard during his residency in Japan. In the jungle, there stands an ancient house that is deteriorating due to the humidity of the local climate and that will therefore
eventually disappear. Scientists have constructed a shell around this house to preserve the older building. At night, insects gather in the space between the two structures. Vink was fascinated by this story and reconstructed a model – a volume with a pitched roof, a dark door, and a dark window.
His scale model house ultimately developed into a film: it became a house that seems to breathe. Very slowly, the building expands and contracts.
You will only notice this fluctuation if you look at the house for a longer period. The eye is deceived: it strains to focus on the light.
However, the work is not merely about viewing an object – it’s also about being viewed yourself. We are looking at the bare house, but Isn’t the house looking at us at the same time?
COMPLEX
‘The blinking eye of the cyclone’, a Video is a collection of films of old tube television going on and off. This work was part of the solo exhibition ‘Complex’ in Aaltonen Museum, Turku, Finland, 2005. Thom Vink’s exhibition Complex focuses on and comments on the cityscape, environment, and
architecture, and the forces that affect us. This Gesamtkunstwerk can also be seen as a manifestation of suppressed feelings and thoughts.
According to Vink, the city is like a puzzle, a complex structure, and a sum of its parts. Besides the physical environment, our actions and thinking, and ultimately our values and the choices we make in our daily life, are guided by the ‘architecture of norms’. In the worst case, these rules that limit and regulate free expression, and our thoughts and movements, can increase anxiety in our minds and chaotic disorder in our
environment. At best, these rules can make us see disagreeable facts and phenomena and give us a push towards changing our reality, life, and physical surroundings. Vink has created an environment in the museum’s Studio where video films, surveillance camera images, soundscapes, drawings, and wall paintings depict the constantly changing cityscape. For Vink, the city is like an organic ‘creature’ that tries to resist the forms and appearances that have been relegated to it beforehand. The artist sees that this living ‘city organ’ functions as an alternative model for a situation where plural ways of living are cherished. In his work, Vink depicts ever-changing borders of the contemporary world. His art can also activate the viewer to participate in
this change and opens up new vistas both to the city and the behavior of its citizens.
Written by Kari Immonen, director of Turku Art Museum. Finland 2005
