Caught in a moment, catalog, 2007

Water circulates in Petri Eskelinen's quietly swinging hemispherical scales. As one half empties, the other slowly starts to fill up. The movement of the water causes the soil at the centre of the works to also move. The work called Laskeuma ('Fallout') suggests rather than explains, but the message is still clear, involving for example the many words which start with hydro, from hydrogeology to hydrostatics.

But Eskelinen's work is also a description fo the progression of time; structurally it is a type of water clock. It keeps acyclic, slow version of time. It is time the observation of which requires more than a moment of our attention. Only balanced economy of the water keeps the progression of time even; any change in this sensitive cycle would make the whole instrument - or, to venture a metaphor, our planet comprising two hemispheres - to break down. As an image, the work is also an archetype of the perpetual motion machine which could solve everything. In reality it is, like all other human constructions in their way, part of the problem. The instrument is so flimsy that it seems to herald its own breaking, a ceasing of function and the end of our time. The geological and hydrological time that Eskelinen's work symbolizes seems at first glance somehow hidden from us, and as such easily somehow uninteresting. The changes are too slow for our concept of time, the measure of which is not much more than one lifetime. However, it may be the case that the climeta is changing at such rate that we are forced to see it; the movement of the scales, the exponential speed at which the glaciers are melting. The great set of scales held by a blind goddes sways back and fort - and do not forget that this goddes also holds the sword of punishment in her other hand.

Jyrki Siukonen, Artist etc.

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