Order and Chaos

Nanna Hänninen (born 1973) moves from a diverse and overexcited world to a calm and frugal interior world. Entering a world of ideas she sets up minimal, reduced, austere situations: a tidy stack of paper on a wooden ground; white adhesive dots on a yellowish ground (the middle-ground is in focus; the rest is blurred; the circles are dissolving, losing their shape); toothpicks, laid out in two rows, sharp like picket fences; twelve white boxes stacked to form a block of three times four boxes; ash on paper, ash scattered all over or with negative shapes left blank, a division in chaos and order. Her work titles- Fear and Security, Keep Under Control, Information Failure- reinforce the idea that these stage-set-like, micro-theatrical scenes are visualized thought, visual aphorisms, emblematic abstractions. In a model-like manner they represent thoughts about the world, about tensions, opposition, overload, sources of error. In her book fear and Security she comments on this tension, “Instead of order, I started to see chaos in things. I have been trying to catch the idea of society, which is filing, sorting and systemizing things, to be more secure and organized. I see a great paradox because setting up security measures you cause insecurity of something unknown… this series (Fear and Security) is about the fear of losing control.” Hänninen focuses on the horror of things escaping our mastery and turning against us in concentrated, almost immaculately white images that suggest innocence as well a infinity. (Translation by Joan Snyder)

Excerpt of the introduction to Exhibition Order & Chaos by
Urs Stahel © 2004
Director of the Fotomuseum Winterthur