MIKA KARHUPhotographs, drawings 1.11.2009 – 22.11.2009

As an artist I am interested in understanding the emotional layers of our past. If we are unable to understand the evolution of man as a cultural and social being, and mankind´s constructed history, we will be incapable of comprehending scientific theories, art or various conceptions of a human being. A deep understanding of the phenomena generated by human conduct is impossible, unless we are able to see how these actions and phenomena have evolved in a first place. And above all, we must be conscious of the conditions that have prevailed when the new forms of conduct have originated.

The constructs of each prevailing cultural and social conducts have arisen and been shaped through historically transmitted information and actions; consequently new actions are always built, inevitably, on the basis of conditions that are already existent. The past and present are thus engaged systemically.

It is out fate that the past and future are a part of our social and cultural conduct, the former as a memory, and the latter as a plan. As an artist I am interested in the tensions of this experiential loop, in which social meanings concurs with emotional interconnectivity.

Mika Karhu