“Giuliana” (Colorado 2024), digital c-type photograph mounted on Dibond panel, 60 x 50 cm © Karoline Hjorth and Riitta Ikonen
The Marion Art Gallery offers a rare opportunity to view photographs by renowned Norwegian-Finnish collaborators Karoline Hjorth and Riitta Ikonen.
The gallery has organized an exhibition of photographs from the duo’s “Eyes as Big as Plates” series, including several never-before-seen 2024 photographs created in Colorado, along with images from Austria, Faroe Islands, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Senegal, South Korea and Tasmania. There is also a video with a behind-the-scenes look at the duo’s creative process.
“Eyes as Big as Plates” opens to the public on Tuesday, Jan. 28 and is on display through April 13. A reception with hors d’oeuvres and beverages takes place on Friday, Jan.31, from 6 to 9 p.m.
In addition, Ikonen will be on campus for a Visiting Artist Program lecture on Friday, March 7 at 4 p.m. in McEwen Hall Room 209 and an informal gallery talk on Saturday, March 8 at 10 a.m. in the Marion Art Gallery.
The exhibition, lecture, gallery talk, and reception are free and open to the public.
The Marion Art Gallery offers a rare opportunity to view photographs by renowned Norwegian-Finnish collaborators Karoline Hjorth and Riitta Ikonen.
The Fredonia exhibition is comprised of 26 photographs spanning a 14-year period between 2011 and 2024. The photographs are designed to challenge conventional narratives on how humans relate to their surroundings across diverse cultures and landscapes, and call for a collective and synchronized environmental stewardship.
A complimentary exhibition catalog — with essays by Dr. Margaret Urban, who is associate professor of Graphic Design at SUNY Fredonia, and Giuliana Furci, field mycologist and fungal activist, founder and CEO of Fungi Foundation — is available at the gallery. A comprehensive hardcover book titled “Eyes as Big as Plates 2” (published in 2021 by arnoldsche Art Publishers in Stuttgart, Germany) is available for purchase at the gallery.
The Marion Art Gallery is on the main level of Rockefeller Arts Center on the Fredonia campus at 280 Central Ave.
Hjorth and Ikonen photograph their collaborators, often individuals actively involved or impacted by effects of this era of mass extinction — farmers, surfers, grandmas, citizen scientists, rewinding experts, wild boar hunters, mycologists, philosophers, etc. — outdoors, camouflaged in organic materials sourced from their surroundings. Each portrait is a dialogue between the collaborator and their living environment, capturing the individual’s belonging to the so-called “nature” and questioning the boundaries between beings.
The labels in the exhibition include a paragraph, written by Hjorth and Ikonen, about each “protagonist” in the image.
“Ideally the images in the ‘Eyes as Big as Plates’ series lure the viewer in with uncertainties and offer space, space for questions and dialogue: who, when, how, why-on-earth,” Ikonen has stated of the photos.
“Eyes as Big as Plates” has become a long-term exploration of relations across beings, with its images exhibited, published, and collected by art institutions worldwide, including the Barbican Centre in London, the Preus Museum (Norway’s National Museum of Photography) in Horten, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki. The first book in the “Eyes as Big as Plates” series (published by Forlaget Press in 2017) was nominated “Best First Photobook” at the Paris Photo/ Aperture Photobook Awards.
Hjorth was born in Oslo, Norway, and currently resides near Oslo. She holds a bachelor's degree in Photographic Arts and a master's degree in International Journalism, both from the University of Westminster, London. Ikonen was born in Kouvola, Finland. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Brighton and her master’s degree from Royal College of Art in London. She lives and works in New York City and London.
“Eyes as Big as Plates” is supported by the Fredonia College Foundation’s Carnahan Jackson Fund for the Humanities and Cathy and Jesse Marion Endowment Fund, as well as Friends of Rockefeller Arts Center.
Gallery hours are: Tuesday through Thursday, from noon to 4 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, from noon to 6 p.m.; Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.; and by appointment. The gallery is closed Mondays and for the campus spring break (March 14 through 23).
For more information about the exhibition or to schedule a free group tour, contact Director Barbara Räcker at barbara.racker@fredonia.edu or call (716) 673-4897.
