In Jani Ruscica’s works, familiar symbols find their way into Kunsthalle Helsinki’s walls and windows by stretching, twisting and gesturing towards the very limits of their recognizability. The large-scale wall paintings and video works linger in conditions that leave room for interpretation.
Signs and symbols change their appearance performatively in Ruscica’s works. The relationship between signs and their signification is always an unstable one: guidelines for reading can be identified, yet compliance with them is challenging if not fully impossible.
Ruscica shows how an image can become deciphered experientially in relation to its materiality and context, instead of its legibility. The large-scale wall paintings on the Kunsthalle’s walls adapt to the building’s architecture. They grow according to the spatial dimensions; the signs bend, topple over, or expand. Sunlight filtering through the windows projects images onto the space, fluid ones, that keep shifting and changing, depending on the time of day and intensity of the light. The confetti scattered on the floor moves across the space with the audience, as it pleases.
