Tommaso Corvi-Mora is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Finnish artist Juha Pekka Matias Laakkonen.

Juha Pekka Matias Laakkonen’s practice makes use of nature as raw material. His work often includes a performative element taking place in an isolated environment, like the middle of a forest. Sometimes objects are produced in the course of the performance and remain as the only trace of the project; the artist brings a work to conclusion by writing a description of it, his words the only documentation of the piece.

For his first show in London he produced a new work which he describes here:

“A tree, left standing from a clear-cut, has fallen. I observe its roots, to figure how it stood. I bore a hole through its trunk from south to north and another one across it, from west to east. I make an infinite loop running through these cardinal holes. I saw a length containing the holes. I drag it away from the rest of the tree and peel it. I turn the log upright. This is the log below.

I climb a tree and saw its trunk at two heights near the top. I remove the section between the cuts and peel it. I wrap it in the bark from the log below. This is the log above.

I return to the fallen tree, bringing the log above. I unwrap the bark. I bend it to open to its original girth and lay my head in the gap where the length was taken, facing the sky. I limit my vision: I use the roll of bark as my telescope and trace the celestial bodies onto the log above.”

In the gallery, the log below is used as a stand/support for the log above. The two are positioned according to the cardinals. The points marked on the log, corresponding to the stars observed in the forest, are projected onto the gallery walls. The hand-drill that was used to drill through the log is used to mark the constellations on the gallery walls, which become a map of a given moment in time in a forest in Sweden. Within a Hollow Sphere.

Juha Pekka Matias Laakkonen was born in Helsinki in 1982 and lives between Finland and Sweden. He has recently taken part in “Disappearing Acts”, the Lofoten International Art Festival in Norway and “Don’t You Know Who I am?” at MuKHA, Antwerp, Belgium. This is his first UK exhibition.