Jani Ruscica: No Dot on the I

In Jani Ruscica’s works, familiar symbols find their way into Kunsthalle Helsinki’s walls and windows by stretching, twisting and gesturing towards the very limits of their recognisability. The large-scale wall paintings and video works linger in conditions that leave room for interpretation.

Signs and symbols change their appearance performatively in Ruscica’s works. The relationship between signs and their signification is always an unstable one: guidelines for reading can be identified, yet compliance with them is challenging if not fully impossible. 

Ruscica shows how an image can become deciphered experientially in relation to its materiality and context, instead of its legibility. The large-scale wall paintings on the Kunsthalle’s walls adapt to the building’s architecture. They grow according to the spatial dimensions; the signs bend, topple over, or expand. Sunlight filtering through the windows projects images onto the space, fluid ones, that keep shifting and changing, depending on the time of day and intensity of the light. The confetti scattered on the floor moves across the space with the audience, as it pleases.      

Self reflexivity, both of form and medium, is elemental to Ruscica. In their video work No Dot on the I (2021), materials and sounds test out their own qualities and nameability. In About Us (refrain to refrain) (2022), improvised performances escape linguistic expression and the video relies on the logic of chance, as an algorithm disrupts its linearity.

The exhibition at Kunsthalle Helsinki also includes a series of wood cuts titled I for Iridescence (2020). The series embodies a shift from object to image, from performance to sign, playing with the inherent ambiguity of the I.

Furthermore, a commissioned prose poem written by Taneli Viljanen is presented as part of the exhibition, as well as the performative piece Felt the Moonlight on my Feet - a, pro, pre, post, contra, ultra, hyper, alter, trans, re, dis, un, dys, extra, co, ex, non, inter, sub (2022) in collaboration with tap dancer Suzanna Pezo. The exhibition is curated by Piia Oksanen. 

Jani Ruscica was born (1978) in Savonlinna, Finland and spent their childhood in Italy. They presently live and work in Helsinki.  Ruscica studied at the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London, as well as at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. Jani Ruscica is represented by Galerie Anhava.