Pekka and Teija Isorättyä - Binary Operations

Ierimonti Gallery is pleased to announce upcoming exhibition – Binary Operations, artistic collaboration of husband and wife duo Pekka and Teija Isorättyä. They work together in a shared process of creating. This is couple’s first solo show in New York.

The exhibition will show artists’ recent sculptures. These abstract interactive machines contemplate found objects: surgical instruments, lenses of theater lights and mirrors. The Isorättyäs’ kinetic and electromechanical sculptures explore the miraculous and rapidly changing technological world that we live in. As we step into an uncontrollable era, artists ask us, what would happen to humanity and how will our interactions with technology shift? Abstract and interactive, the robotic sculptures employ formal elegance with mechanized intricacies. The sculptures highlight the beauty of the mechanical world as well as the fear of the unknown that comes with facing the ambiguity of our future.

The amalgamation of art and technology is reminiscent of automata and is similar in creation process; hand-made, incredibly detail oriented, and time consuming. Using found objects, Isorättyäs’ work draws parallels between the physical and the digital worlds. The fragmented mirrors and gears draw attention to our self-awareness about the nature of man and machine, and let the viewer explore what is happening to humanity in new technological era. Their automata often include medical and bodily references, probing the boundaries of what it is to be human or organically alive.

Pekka and Teija Isorättyä were both born in 1980 in Tornio, Finland. They met at kindergarten and later studied at Aalto University where they pursued Masters of Arts in 2010. The couple has lived and worked all around the world – Japan, Mexico, Europe. The Isorättyäs previously ran the art space Invalid Robot Factory in Berlin until 2013.  They have held residencies at Gängeviertel of Hamburg, C.A.P Kobe in Japan and the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York, and have exhibited internationally at a number of galleries, museums, and institutions, including Galleria Sculptor, Helsinki, Kobe studios, Japan, Finland Institute in Deutschland, Berlin; and most recently at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki where they had been nominated for the 2017 Ars Fennica Award.

Their son Iisakki (born 2015) is also a large inspiration on their work and accompanies them on their travels.