At the end of October BLANCO hosts visual artists Linda Jasmin Mayer (BE/IT) and Sara Pathirane (FI). The space turns into allusions of unknown worlds that are balancing in between becoming visible and staying invisible, and a place where new life forms are cracking out from their cocoons. Blind embossings and painted silk occupy the space in a silent woosh.
As in October the Comet A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) is hovering around the sun, BLANCO sucks in some of its celestial light and shows hints of the other worlds the comet has lingered on before entering the inner solar system. It has dived into deep oceans, picked up the fluorescent shimmer of planktons, the underwater stars, and dyed its tails in the dust of disappeared planets. If not seen with a bare eye, or if you miss out on the comet, BLANCO gives you a chance to see the aftersensation of it, the afterimages of the other worlds.
The works in the exhibition have been supported by:
Flanders State of Art — Autonome Provinz Bozen Südtirol Deutsche Kultur — Biennale Gherdeina — Immo Mayer — Niederstätter AG — The Finnish Cultural Foundation
Previously, Mayer and Pathirane have collaborated participating in the Colombo Art Biennale, curated by CoCA / Poornima Jayasinghe, with a long-term research project and video installation Invisible Walls. They first met in Documenta(13) as assistants of late American video artist Paul Ryan.
Linda Jasmin Mayer was born in Meran and lives and works in Gent. Her work develops predominantly through mediums of video art and installation, often with sculptural and participatory aspects. She explores topics of social alienation and the interplay between humanity and nature.
Linda Jasmin Mayer’s work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions internationally and is in private and public collections. She received a MFA from the Time and Space Arts study programme of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki in 2014 and a BFA in Sculpture Studies from the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, Milan in 2010. She studied at the School of Media Arts of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen in 2014 and 2015. In 2018 she participated in the ISP of Maumaus in Lisbon. In 2022 she graduated from the Practice-based Research in Visual Arts programme, HISK in Gent.
Her graduation work, How to Break the Ice, received the Kuvataideakatemian Ystävät prize in 2013 in Helsinki. In 2020 she received, together with Sebastian Kulbaka, the SKB Fellowship for a residency at the Cité internationale des arts Paris. In 2024 she received the Paul Flora Prize, awarded by the Province of Tyrol, Austria and the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol, Italy.
Sara Pathirane is a Finnish visual artist living and working in Helsinki. Having a background in the expanded field of painting and media art, Pathirane works with small- to large-scale silk painting and video installations in environmental art, gallery shows, and as part of contemporary dance performances. Her long-term focus is depicting the forces of nature interfering and interacting with human aesthetic and imaginary ideas.
She has exhibited in venues such as Gallery Forum Box, Colombo Art Biennale, Adelaide Festival Centre, Rencontres International Paris/Berlin, Taiga-Space, Palazzo Lucarini, Galleria Moitre and Other’s Art Fair. She holds a MA degree from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. Pathirane is an alumni from the Art Students League at Vyt residency program (NY). She has obtained honorary mentions from Anita Snellman Foundation, Helsingin Saskiat and the Maecenas Guild, and public art awards from the Science entre Heureka and Taidetta Jätkälle.
