ESKO MÄNNIKKÖ – TIME FLIES
2015-03-02Time Flies, is a selection of works by Finnish photographer Esko Männikkö. The selection is drawn from the artist’s current museum retrospective, which originated in Finland at the Kunsthalle Helsinki and is travelling to Collezione Maramotti, Italy; Huis Marseilles, Amsterdam; and Gothenburg Museum of Art, Sweden. Männikkö was previously the winner of the 2008 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, the first time a Finnish artist has been recipient of this prestigious award.
As a self-taught artist, Männikkö counts few stylistic precedents or influences, and though his interest in the residue of everyday life is the foundation of his image making, his formalism lends itself to metaphoric or existential modes of interpretation. Time Flies includes a range of images – abandoned cars, cemetery portrait sculpture, discarded family photographs – whose subjects bear witness to the passage of time and serve as a poignant meditation on the inevitable collapse of all material things, human or inanimate. In the Time Flies retrospective catalog essay, art historian Liz Wells suggests that Männikkö’s imagery moves “from social documentary towards a more expressionist formal aesthetic, and from the more specifically located to a more generalized engagement with the nature of existence.”
Exhibition runs through to March 14th, 2015
Yancey Richardson Gallery
525 West 22nd Street
New York
NY 10011
