Sampo Malin

"I am interested in the spheres, boundaries and volumes of the real and the unreal and their interfaces. The conceptual opposites of weight/weightlessness, visible/invisible and tangible/intangible, and also the moment when they turn into their opposite, these are also an important aspect of my work," says the artist Sampo Malin (b. 1977) concerning the core of his work. Malin’s sculptures are typically finished with extreme care, but as an artist he could be described as a sculptor of concepts instead of matter: he calls our attention to the indefinite mental boundaries of the viewer/experiencer himself, contrasting them against the physical dimensions of the work. The delineation theme thus applies to questions about the interior and exterior of the work and the boundary between perception and the imperceptible, forcing the viewer to consider the question of which perceptions, if any, can be used to define what one sees. Malin questions the form of his works by de-materialising their dimensions. Light generated, focused or reflected in different ways, abstracting the work by virtue of its being an immaterial trace, is an essential element in many of his works. “Egoes” (2007), the two-part work in OPEN, will also draw attention to the ambiguity of the work’s own boundaries as the light changes in the cycle of night and day. The light coming from inside also breaks the anatomy and clarity of the work itself, making the moment of perception and the effect of the work on its surroundings more important than the physical object itself.