Timo Kelaranta

Photographer Timo Kelaranta is best known for his abstract, minimalistic works. Kelaranta aims to capture a sense of emptiness by fading out points of identification and conventional composition. He has described his work as a primarily a physical process. He has worked with metal and plastic, but has moved on to work with almost solely photography and paper.

Kelaranta’s passion for photography did not spark off right away. He has described his relationship to the camera as a kind of a strange love-affair that took a long time to develop fully. This complexity makes the pictures come across almost sculpturesque, as if they were just about to penetrate through the face of the photograph. Kelaranta based his 2012 retrospective exhibition ‘Strange Love’ on exploring and unwrapping his relationship with photography.

Kelaranta’s work is rarely too self-explanatory, and the meaning is often found in what is not present. His final imagery largely consists of mostly round, ellipse or triangular forms, but the role of emptiness remains the main theme of the work. In his 2011 series of works For Auli Kelaranta’s idea was to touch upon the fragile area between the material and immaterial realms of existence. “The main thing is always the intensity of light, which is the real subject and protagonist of my work,” Kelaranta says.

During his residency, Kelaranta shot a new series for his upcoming retrospective publication A Kiss Given by Time to Light, where he seeks to dispel the line between sketches and artworks. Many of his semi-abstract works draw influence from the urban milieu, such as the streets of New York.

http://www.timokelaranta.com/