Arno Rafael Minkkinen - Going the Distance

About

Persons Projects / Helsinki School is proud to present the first solo exhibiton of Arno Rafael Minkkinen in Berlin. 

Arno Rafael Minkkinen is one of the most historical figures within the Helsinki School – both as an artist, teacher, writer and mentor. His self portraits are a mixture of performance art especially staged for the camera combined his intimate relationship with nature. His method of working has always been about testing his own personal limits and how far he can push the human body with all the physical risks he encounters, in capturing himself within the photograph. What you see in his photographs is what they are, a solitary figure as one with the natural landscape that surrounds him. Sculpturally poetic, his body is captured in the process of becoming. Sometimes a leg becomes a branch in a tree or a hand finding its touch on the horizon. His art reveals a process that blends his philosophy of life with a calmness that grows from the confidence of being one with yourself and your surroundings. Minkkinen states “for any idea to succeed it has to be anchored in the reality of the moment. Art is a risk made visible. It’s my philosophy of vision. Or perhaps it is also this: I think, therefore I see; therefore, as Descartes would have it, I am.” 

The photographs selected for his solo presentation at Persons Projects in Berlin, were chosen to highlight the more performance like aspect that lies behind his work. These pieces were drawn from various time periods throughout Minkkinen’s career, to form the humanist base from which he has developed his unique language that combines the sublime with the uncanny.