Looking at ANTTI LAITINEN’S works – photographs, videos, installations and conceptual objects – one can sense the physical labour behind them: the hours of digging, moving, building, re-organizing, chopping, arranging and documenting. Laitinen’s practice has long revolved around trees and the forest. He may, for example, cut a tree to pieces and then reconstruct it, or encase the tree in a piece of armour made from sheet metal. The process involves a great deal of work combined with an act of seemingly light character, performativity, and a sincere and playful way of portraying the relationship of man and nature.
Antti Laitinen (b. 1975, Raahe) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki in 2004. Laitinen’s most recent solo exhibitions include WAM Turku City Art Museum, Finland; GSA Gallery, Stockholm; and La Patinoire Royale/Galerie Valérie Bach, Brussels. He has participated in several important international group exhibitions, including at Borås Art Museum, Sweden; Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul; Savina Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; Riverside Museum, Beijing; and The Art Gallery of Alberta, Canada, among others. In 2013, Antti Laitinen represented Finland at the Venice Biennale. His works are included in numerous private and public collections, including the Saatchi Collection, the Zabludowicz Collection, the Saastamoinen Foundation Collection, ArtCenter/Istanbul, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma and Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art.