OF DOORS AND WINDOWS
– Images of the In-Between
Gallery Ama, Helsinki, Finland. 2018
Here’s an easy exercise in mindfulness-training for you: think of all the times you pass through a doorway each day.You probably do it without noticing, most of the time – then again, this banal little hole in the wall can sometimes become a gate opening onto another reality.
And how often do you hastily look out the window, without thinking that at that very moment you might be about to touch on some of the secrets of being in the world?
Well, often we absentmindedly trudge past alien windows, without a clue that we may be stepping onto the stage in someone else’s story, squeezing into the frame of a moving picture, for which its audience just thought they had discovered a watertight interpretation.
Other times, we might try and steal a stealthy glance at ourselves, as reflected on a dark windowpane and then suddenly, when the lights turn on, there’s someone else looking back. Is the light in the window an invitation home or is it just a doomed dream of The Little Match Girl?
Now, am I behind a door or in front of it? What is the message of a door closed, what the message of a door ajar, a door wide open? Who or what is this entity called self, just about to stumble at the threshold?
Happy are they who still linger for a while, sitting on their doorstep when the day fades, face-to-face with the world – a free horizon before their eyes while behind their backs the clatter of someone setting the table for evening meal. Happy are they who light-heartedly lean on their elbows in an open window, half here, half there. (But how does one light-heartedly lean on one’s elbows in a glass façade system?)
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There are quite a number of images on display now – but don’t be fooled by the number: they are all just variations on a few basic themes or primal images.There may be a story line but it doesn’t really matter whether you find any logic in its progress or not – if there is any progress in the first place.There are beginnings, middles and endings, but in an arbitrary order…
