Between Two Dots

Tanja Koljonen

The negotiation of complementary opposites and extremes – such as exposure and concealment, communication and alienation, rules and chance – are emblematic for Tanja Koljonen’s photographic works. Based on objets trouvés (found objects) and fragments of texts and images as traces of human inscription, the artist’s recent works have been dealing with language and the visual, material potential of words and ideas. Through cutting, covering, editing and erasing, Koljonen assembles, reworks and reframes newspaper clippings, advertisements and illustrations, subsequently disrupting the initial visual logic and semantic order of text and image. Detached from an original function and meaning, the remaining lingual and visual fragments are refigured into new constellations and contexts of possible dialogue. Her playing with the impossible idea of complete thoughts and the inexhaustibility of words and meanings results in a continuous search for stillness in the chaotic flood of information of today’s world.