ZHdK MA Fine Arts alumnus Leevi Toija received the Kiefer Hablitzel Prize 2024 for Toija’s Motion Study series. Official description: Leevi Toija presents five LCD screens measuring approximately 50 × 35 cm, each fixed vertically at its center, at eye level, on an articulated metal arm that holds it at a distance from the wall on which it is hung. Together, they comprise a set of monochrome tableaux in orange, mauve, black, blue, and yellow, both fixed and mobile. In fact, the images are close-ups of details of functional devices, animated by certain rotating components. The filmed objects (musical box, toy, camera, salad dryer, cassette player) evoke a bygone mechanical era. In each panel, a central cog, aligned with the fixing point at the rear of the screen, turns in a loop. The devices all have a different rhythm and sometimes contain other elements rotating at varying speeds. The montage is extremely precise, both sculpturally and conceptually. The varied rhythms emanate a strange sense of poetry, disturbing in its sensual yet mechanical inevitability. Leevi Toija was born in 1998 in Helsinki (Finland), works in Zurich and Helsinki.

Leevi Toija: Motion Study / Swiss Art Awards 2024. Basel (Switzerland), June 10, 2024.

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