ARTIST
ELINA BROTHERUS
Art at the Plaza
Elina Brotherus. ”Horizon 7”
The artist Elina Brotherus (b. 1972, Helsinki) is a Finnish photographer and video artist whose work moves between self-image, landscape, and art historical references. She lives and works in Helsinki and Avallon (France).
Background & style
Brotherus holds an MA in Photography from the University of Art and Design Helsinki (now Aalto University) and an MSc in Chemistry from the University of Helsinki. Her practice moves between the autobiographical and an art-historically investigative approach, often with the artist herself as model.
Working methods & technique
In the series The New Painting, Brotherus works with large-scale colour photography and tests painting’s classical questions – light, colour, composition, the figure in space – using the means of photography. The suite of images includes both landscapes (Horizon, Low Horizon, Very Low Horizon) and works featuring the human figure.
Subjects & themes
Elina Brotherus continually returns to the relationship between body and place, between gaze and image. In the horizon images, the horizon line is shifted to alter the viewer’s experience of space and distance; in other works, the model becomes a sign rather than a portrait.
The work "Horizon 7"
HORIZON 7 is a photographic work from the part of The New Painting that deals with the horizon line. The work is known from the publication and through museum and magazine material; it exemplifies the series’ interest in how a low or high horizon transforms the landscape into a restrained, painterly charged image.