Purdy Hicks Gallery is delighted to announce a solo exhibition of the works of Finnish photographer, Santeri Tuori (born 1970, Finland). With his photographs and films Tuori has found away to make the landscape genre come alive.

Over the last seven years he has spent much time on the remote island of Kökar in the Åland archipelago making the Forest series. Tuori photographs the same place, from the same spot, over and over again at different times and seasons, sometimes years apart. Multiple images, both black and white and colour, are then superimposed. The process is similar for the moving images from the Forest series: they are the result of layering, colour video with black and white photographs. This gives the films the clarity and richness of a photograph combined with the movement and time of a video.

We are accustomed to view the sky always in reference to ground, water or vegetation, but Tuori's recent Sky Series, taken over a period of a year, focus solely on the sky as a subject in its own right. The artist layers black and white and colour photographs, giving some more prominence while others are only vaguely suggested. The result are images that seems as if on the border of painting and photography and allow the viewer total immersion in skyscapes of great depth and luminosity. As in Tuori's earlier portrait series the traditions of painting are as relevant as the traditions of photography.

The curator and historian, Jan-Erik Lundström writes of these two series: "We meet the sky and the forest's appearances and apparitions in his work. The distinctions between still and moving image representations are constantly reshuffled and up-turned, the image remains unresolved, in motion. The time of duration and the time of the decisive moment are no longer opposites. In fact, Santeri Tuori seems to skilfully choreograph the disappearance of time."

Santeri Tuori has held solo exhibitions at the Malmö Art Museum and the Haninge Konsthall, Sweden; Wäinö Aaltonen Art Museum and Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Finland; Wacoal Art Center, Tokyo; Pro Art Foundation, St. Petersburg, and at the Fotofocus Festival in Cincinnati, USA, among other venues. He has participated in many international museum exhibitions from the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki to the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Videos and photographs are included in many public collections.