Jani Ruscica
Jani Ruscica's self-reflexive works explore the intersection between cinema, video art, theatre and performance. Ruscica has worked with scientists, theatre makers and street performers. A recent piece, Flatlands (2018), perhaps exemplifies this cross-disciplinary approach. The work centers on three musical instruments located in caricatures or animated films depicting fictional musical instruments. The work appropriates and reinterprets the images of the instruments in the form of actual three dimensional objects, thereby underlining the materiality of objects of visual representation, as well as associations awakened by matter and material. Originating from different eras and vastly different contexts, the instruments carry strong political overtones. The "glass harmonica," taken from a 1960s Soviet animation is seemingly a cross between an organ and a harp, while another resembles some strange cross between a guillotene and a drum.
Born in Finland in 1978, Ruscica received his BFA from the Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2002, and his MFA from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2007. His recent exhibitions include solo shows at the KIASMA Museum in Helsinki, Hilary Crisp in London, and Otto Zoo in Milan. He has taken part in the 6th Liverpool Biennale, the 5th Momentum Biennial in Norway, the show Life Forms at the Bonniers …
Jani Ruscica's self-reflexive works explore the intersection between cinema, video art, theatre and performance. Ruscica has worked with scientists, theatre makers and street performers. A recent piece, Flatlands (2018), perhaps exemplifies this cross-disciplinary approach. The work centers on three musical instruments located in caricatures or animated films depicting fictional musical instruments. The work appropriates and reinterprets the images of the instruments in the form of actual three dimensional objects, thereby underlining the materiality of objects of visual representation, as well as associations awakened by matter and material. Originating from different eras and vastly different contexts, the instruments carry strong political overtones. The "glass harmonica," taken from a 1960s Soviet animation is seemingly a cross between an organ and a harp, while another resembles some strange cross between a guillotene and a drum.
Born in Finland in 1978, Ruscica received his BFA from the Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2002, and his MFA from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2007. His recent exhibitions include solo shows at the KIASMA Museum in Helsinki, Hilary Crisp in London, and Otto Zoo in Milan. He has taken part in the 6th Liverpool Biennale, the 5th Momentum Biennial in Norway, the show Life Forms at the Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm, and the group show Shifting Identities: Identitá nell’arte contemporanea delle ultime generazioni tra Finlandia ed Estonia at MACRO Testaccio in Rome. Screenings of his videos have been organised at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Modern in London, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2012, he made a film for MTV’s Art Breaks, in collaboration with MoMA PS1 in New York.
Courtesy of Otto Zoo and the artist's website
