Santeri Tuori

Artistic approach

Santeri Tuori belongs to the Helsinki School, a veritable institution of artists, researchers and teachers which has profoundly reinvented Nordic photography since the 1990s. It is much more than a movement, and is characterised by a pedagogy of images founded on research, interdisciplinary dialogue and formal experimentation. Santeri Tuori’s work is fully aligned with this approach: he interrogates the relationship between reality and image, between what we see and what we think we see.

Over the years, his work has shifted towards more abstract and meditative forms, while conserving this central focus on the gaze and its construction. His Forest project, which started in 2009, marked a turning point: in it, the artist laid static black-and-white images over colour videos, creating hybrid compositions. Trees, leaves and light are no longer naturalist motifs, but visual elements being constantly rewritten.

Under this logic, the sky — an untethered space without contours or scale — becomes a subject in and of itself. The Sky series began in 2010 and is still ongoing. It is part of this search for an open, moving image at the intersection between photography, video and painting. The works exhibited for Chaumont-Photo-sur-Loire are part of this series. They do not represent the sky as it is, but as it appears when our gaze takes the time to slow down, contemplate and traverse it. It is less of a landscape than an experience of time.

Sky is an extension of the artist’s key concerns: making the invisible visible, capturing that which evades us, and recording time in a photographic medium. Nothing is imposed by the works: they welcome the viewer. They do not illustrate an idea, but rather activate a state of suspension, confusion and attention. In an era saturated with “fast” images, Santeri Tuori's work rehabilitates a slow timeline, an image that resists scrolling, forgetting and saturation.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES