Passante

Galleria Sculptor, 3.10.–26.10.2025

passante, (italian) noun: passer-by, (also belt loop, bypass road)

Unearthing
Yearning

We carry with us things, sometimes the superfluous too. At times they pour out from their containers, left behind, forgotten. They pass by, accumulate into piles, on the chairs in the corners of rooms, on kerbsides, as islets in the atmosphere and the oceans.

In their plurality the things become placeless. Intentionally ignored. But nothing came from the emptiness. Things and structures amass, demand, material from somewhere. Components have been excavated, mined, combined and boiled with other materials. In a precise application they become another, perhaps a new matter. New thing. New story.

Ursula K. Le Guin writes in her essay Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1986) how she finally found a story regarding the history of humanity which she could relate to, when she read of Elizabeth Fisher’s theory of the same title. What if the first sign of civilization, the first tool, was a container? In a bowl, basket or cloth, one can collect food and other useful items – humans too – to carry with throughout one’s journeys.

In the belly of a bag a hand reaches to find a familiar texture, a saw-like metallic edge of the key or the round plastic surface of an electric badge. Besides the clutter, at the bottom of the bag an image of the self is drawn, likeness of the human. What I hold on to; what could I share with others, if asked.

Sediment
Turning

We leave behind trails, streams of things, paths of self, mounds of constructions. What’s left is a route, a suggestion for a story. The outermost layer of the earth is permeated by a built environment, presently. Infrastructure with its roads, bridges, fibre optic cables – the indirect footprint of man. It repeats itself as long as every day is, for now.

An object, a thing, leaves an impression on a material. Pressed and turned around it makes a mould and transfers a print, an image, somewhere else. The dents and bumps are turned around, processed, set apart from the rest.

The negative finds its positive. The turning, the repetition, constructs an image of a whole. A sediment of constituents, parts. Strata, sub and super. What was once essential is buried under and later, maybe once again revealed.

Text: Isa Lumme

Images: Santeri Kuisma