Together and individually the texts in PUBLICS street-facing window function as both instruction and permission to the passerby. A chance to pause and consider something very basic and essential for life.

Stand still. Be quiet.

Close your eyes. Breath in.

Open your eyes. Breath out.

Slowly in. Slowly out.

As with a parent’s directions to a child the statements can be felt as unwanted and authoritarian or as a gentle encouragement to a better way. The texts have a simplicity of suggestion whilst holding an implicit critique of the inattention of the everyday. In these strange times, they could also be read as a description of the new normal, when to breath and its control has become central to all our lives.

Ian Whittlesea is an artist and teacher with Total Art School; a flexible education platform for artists and designers who want to invigorate their practice with a period of challenging experimentation. In 2021, Total Art School will visit Helsinki for HEALTHY WEALTHY, a participant-led teaching residency event at PUBLICS. The school will present five days of actions addressing life/work balances, with a focus on health culminating in an exhibition.

Ian Whittlesea’s work explores the relationships between language, light, image and diagram both on the page and in the world. It is driven by a renegotiation of modernist and esoteric histories, especially those which propose possibilities of embodied transformation. From devoting five years to become a black belt in judo in order to better understand Yves Klein’s practice to exploring the Mazdaznan breathing and movement exercises that Johannes Itten taught at the Bauhaus he has consistently attempted to elucidate Sol LeWitt’s statement: Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.