Oliver Whitehead studies visual information and its interpretation. The solo exhibition, Barely Visible, presents photo collages, charcoal drawings, drawing installation, and paintings that study unclear information.

The cultural change associated to tourism is one of the main themes of the exhibition. Bathing figures loitering around the pools are a familiar theme from the context of art history. They can be also seen as a representation of the contemporary culture. In the 20th century, a tourist was considered as a “kitsch-man”, that is, a character who is consuming staged and disposable culture. In the 21st century, there is already a certain nostalgy to tourism. In his collages, Whitehead uses the advertisements of tourist destinations found in the magazines from the 80s and 90s. In the age of environmental crisis, these images represent a lost world.

The shift in cultural history is itself an example of something that is hard to grasp and ambivalent. It can be considered as troublesome information; this kind of information is difficult to locate. The attempt to define exactly the shift in time seems almost impossible. The change itself is barely recognized, rather it is experienced as something intuitive and mysterious. Whitehead presents the city and the environment almost as in a thriller; the gaze is directed at times to the surfaces of the city, at times the focus is on the people in the urban environment. The visual cues form a series of leads, that may be arranged in to a story, though at times a random one.

Sini Mononen

Oliver Whitehead works with painting, drawing, video, graphic art, photography, and poetry. Lately he has also been experimenting with contemporary dance.

During the exhibition, there are screenings of the selection of films by Oliver Whitehead. The screenings are held on Fri January 11th at 5 pm and Sat January 19th at 8 pm.  The duration of the screening is approximately one hour.