Two Hundred Seasons by Arno Rafael Minkkinen at Fotografiska, Stockholm until 18 April, 2021

The exhibition Two Hundred Seasons at Fotografiska, Stockholm presents works by Arno Rafael Minkkinen – photographs made from 1970 to 2020 selected from numerous locations in thirty different countries worldwide including thirty American states. The exhibition is neither a chronological survey nor a retrospective.

Concentrating instead on the existential human condition through self-portraiture, Two Hundred Seasons becomes an exuberant museum experience by an artist who has defied categorization for the past five decades. The observant visitor will notice that the exterior walls of the exhibition are marked by a thin horizon line. Birch trees swaying, songbirds singing, owls hooting, and bullfrogs chatting along shorelines complete the sensory impression.

As social distancing has become the new normal, it is good to pause and reflect in front of Minkkinen’s self-portraits. He seamlessly blends his body with the natural elements so that each image becomes a visual puzzle. Almost always in solitude, without the help of assistants looking through the camera or manipulation of any kind, he transforms something as specific as a naked body in nature into something universal. By restricting himself to self-defined limitations, he seeks to keep everything the same, and yet every photograph is always different.

‘From his first works in the early 1970s until today, his images have preserved the same timelessness and aesthetic signature. I know of no one in the history of art whose persistence of vision and practice has extended nonstop for over fifty years. Although his photographs can be viewed as conceptually linked to artists such as Bruce Nauman, Lucas Samaras, and Cindy Sherman, Minkkinen is Minkkinen, flouting all and any classification. Arno Rafael Minkkinen is pure poetry, and his oeuvre is an enduring, contemporary homage to the relationship between nature and humankind – Ellen-K Willas, Curator -. Its been 57 seasons now since we first met on that ferry in Kristiansund, Arno Rafael Minkkinen and I. I am so humbled and proud to have been part of creating this beautiful exhibition at the worlds best place for photography’.