Liisa Lounilas films, which form the core of the young Finnish artists first London solo exhibition, look like a curious cross between scruffy amateur video and ultra-hip TV commercials. Shot on a handmade 360 pinhole camera, they subvert the very premise of the medium in that they actually consist of a series of photographs simultaneously taken from different angles and edited together to create a sense of movement. Despite the illusion of a continuous sequence, what we see or even better what we experience is the wonder of a frozen moment, constantly suspended, perpetually unfulfilled, yet magically brought to life, painfully present and real. Lounila re-invents film as a device of photographing time. 
 
The uncertain territory between the still and the moving image is where Lounila operates. She uses it as a site for questioning the dissemination of an event through its visual re-presentations and, subsequently, the very nature of seeing. This lasting interest in the ways images exist marks the different strands of Lounilas practice, often leading to dissolution of meaning and its synchronous recovery in a slightly different, unforeseen register. In red and black glitter paintings a series of street graffiti is transposed into shiny, opulent objects, their meaning emptied and cheekily re-directed towards new realms of signification. 
 
Beyond all technological novelty and conceptual mischief what makes films like Popcorn (2001) and Play>> (2003) as gripping as they are is a mournful quality embedded in the distinctly grainy texture of the image. Showing the artists friends partying, the films are not only elaborate observations on the passing of time, but also melancholic reflections on the unreliability of memory and the elusive sense of community it generates. "Pretend that youre now here. Your first try probably wont be your last, and you still have the resources to go the distance reads the quote from internet horoscope site Lounila uses as an intro for Play>>. It is this reliance on the possibility to remember optimistic and always already dismissed that Lounilas investigations into youth cultures effectively reclaim.

- Sinisa Mitrovic