CLOSER
Susan Sontag writes in On Photography (1977) that the camera places us at a distance from its subject. Through the photographic image, another person can be observed without reciprocity. Looking becomes safe, and at times detached. Cinema often reproduces a similar distance: on screen, a person appears as an image rather than as an encounter.
In this exhibition, the encounter emerges in the space between two images and separate timelines. Two performers appear on overlapping screens, and a relationship unfolds between them, shaped by camera movement, choreography, and spatial composition. The roles of performer and camera operator continuously alternate, forming a feedback loop in which each choreography shapes the next. In this process, the boundaries between performance and creation, as well as distance and reciprocity, begin to blur.
The exhibition operates along the threshold between the documentary and the constructed, between presence and representation. It lingers on questions of what an encounter can mean within an image, and how an image might produce an experience of relation.
This exploration draws on the portrait and its traditional promise of a particular kind of connection. Roland Barthes writes in Camera Lucida (1980) that a photograph is always a sign of someone’s presence, a trace of a situation in which someone once stood in front of the camera. In this work, presence is distributed across multiple levels and temporalities, and the relationship takes shape in the space between images.
Perhaps the encounter does not occur between the people depicted, but between the viewer and the image, at the moment when the illusion of closeness begins to feel real.
Two channel video installation
Gallerie Hippolyte, Helsinki, Finland, 2026
Picture and sound - Kalle Nio & Emilie Largier
Performers - Kalle Nio & Emilie Largier
Production - Kalle Nio / WHS
The film’s colours were made possible by Genesis.
The projection fabrics were made possible with support from ShowTex.
The exhibition was supported by WHS, Kordelin foundation, City of Espoo, Genesis, ShowTex