CRYSTAL EYE
On Breathing



Eija-Liisa Ahtila
On Breathing
1-Channel monitor/projected installation
2025 | 9 min 23 sec | 4K | 16:9 | Audio 2.1
On some early mornings after summer,
when the sea is still warm but the nights are cold,
a fog rises from the sea and envelops the neighborhood.
It calms the area and gently alters visibility,
making things nearby detach from their backgrounds,
emphasizing their closeness and presence.
The air around the oak tree seems tangible,
and the space inside it becomes actual,
as if the breathing of the tree
were, for a moment, perceivable.
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS




CURRENT EXHIBITIONS BY EIJA-LIISA AHTILA
REFLECTION OF A FOREST – Serlachius Museums, Mänttä, Finland,
Dec 14, 2024 – Apr 27, 2025
HORIZONTAL – Otherlands, MMCA, National Museum of Modern and
Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Korea, Sep 10, 2024 - Mar 30, 2025
THE HOUSE – Homage to Older Women, Railroad posters, Copenhagen,
Denmark, Mar 3 – 16, 2024
HORIZONTAL – Otherlands, MMCA, Gwacheon, South Korea,
Sep 10, 2024 - Mar 30, 2025
CASTING PORTRAITS – Soulmates, STDLK Museum, Breda,
The Netherlands, Oct 1, 2024 – Mar 9, 2025
HORIZONTAL – The Third Hand, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden,
Feb 24, 2024 - Jan 12, 2025
ON BREATHING – Your Patience is Appreciated, Marian Goodman Gallery,
New York, USA, Oct 26 – Dec 19, 2024
APRIL – Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Holland, Mar 24 - Sep 15, 2024
ME/WE, OKAY, GRAY – Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon, France,
Sep 22, 2023 - Jan 7, 2024
HORIZONTAL – Connect Me, Trapholt Museum of Modern Art and Design,
Kolding, Denmark, Sep 24, 2022 - Aug 13, 2023
FISHERMEN – Museum Jorn, Silkeborg, Denmark, Jan 17 – May 17, 2023
ANTHROPOMORPHIC EXERCISES ON FILM – Gösta, Serlachius Museums,
Mänttä, Finland, Nov 5, 2022 – Apr 16, 2023
THE HOUSE – Face-a-Face, Mudam, Luxemburg, Oct 8, 2022 - Apr 2, 2023
HORIZONTAL – Gardenroom, Voorlinden Museum & Gardens, Wassenaar,
The Netherlands, Nov 19, 2022 – Jan 31, 2023
POTENTIALITY FOR LOVE – Future Cities, Daejeon Art and Science Biennale,
Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon, South Korea, Aug 2 - Oct 30, 2022
IF 6 WAS 9 – Moderna Museet, Malmö, Sweden, Apr 9 - Sep 11, 2022
HORIZONTAL – World Living Soils Forum, La Grande Halle, Arles, France,
May 22 – Jun 2, 2022
THE ANNUNCIATION, THE BRIDGE – Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, USA,
Jan 27 - May 7, 2022
HORIZONTAL – Ars Fennica, Hämeenlinna Museum, Hämeenlinna, Finland,
Oct 15, 2021 - Mar 3, 2022
IF 6 WAS 9 – Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, Oct 23, 2021 - Feb 20, 2022
HORIZONTAL – Lichtsicht Triennale, Bad Rothenfelde, Germany,
Oct 22, 2021 - Feb 20, 2022


APRIL ≈ 61°01' 24°27'
(2024) is a 8–channel (vertically) projected installation with audio 8.0
APRIL is a multi-channel moving image installation that reflects upon the spatiality of an area of a forest by projecting it onto a rectangular wall, a human structure.
The theme of APRIL is the spatiality of being and the constant change that is its fundamental quality. The source of the work is life in a forest where each singular being is an integrated element of the whole. The work was shot in a conservation area where the forest is allowed to exist without human intervention.
APRIL was shot in the course of two years, appr between the end of March and end of May, and it covers the passage from winter to summer. In the beginning, the image at left still shows snow covering the ground, at right it is already summer. The work is a part of a longer project that explores the possibilities of ecological narration in moving image, and of moving away from the anthropocentric world views.
The base of APRIL is the location and its nature and the way it presents itself. APRIL draws upon its light situations and spatial changes, its transitions and circumstances, its passage of time, its configuration of living beings and perceptions of movement.
More
FILM screenings



ROUTEMASTER by ILPPO POHJOLA
Tampere Film Festival, Finland, Mar 5, 2025
Luminor-Hôtel de Ville, Paris, France, Nov 14, 2023
Collectif Jeune Cinema, Paris, France, Oct 11, 2023
DADDY AND THE MUSCLE ACADEMY by ILPPO POHJOLA
Pride Screening, Kalliola Settlement, Helsinki, Jun 25 - 28, 2024
Fire island Screenings, New York, Jun 7 - 9, 2024
Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland, April 29, June 2 and Sep 1, 2023
Fotografiska New York, NY, USA, Jun 16, 2021
Queer Lisboa - International Queer Film Festival, Portugal, Sep 20 - 28, 2019
Films4fags, Tom of Finland House, Los Angeles, California, USA, Aug 17, 2019
Berlin International Film Festival, Germany, Feb 7 - 17, 2019
LOVE IS A TREASURE – EIJA-LIISA AHTILA
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia, July 9 & 11, 2023
RETROSPECTIVE – EIJA-LIISA AHTILA
Kino Regina, Finnish Film Archive, Helsinki, Mar 30 - May 11, 2022
STUDIES ON THE ECOLOGY OF DRAMA, THE ANNUNCIATION, THE HOUR OF PRAYER, LOVE IS A TREASURE, CONSOLATION SERVICE, TODAY, IF 6 WAS 9, ME/WE, OKAY, GRAY
P(L)AIN TRUTH by ILPPO POHJOLA
Queer Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia, Apr 26 - 30, 2022
Vinokino Festival Tour: Turku, Oulu, Jyväskylä, Helsinki, Joensuu, Finland,
Oct 22 - Dec 5, 2021


HORIZONTAL – VARIABLE VERSIONS




HORIZONTAL is a six-channel moving portrait of a living spruce tree.
The attempt to film a spruce tree brings the portrayer face to face with the technical apparatus constructed as an extension of the human eye and perception. It also invites us to consider the preconditions of anthropocentric dramaturgy and the valuations it engenders in images and in the order of representation. It is a record of its existence as a living organism, or perhaps more to the point, a presentation of the difficulty of perceiving and recording a spruce tree with the methods of visual documentation invented by humans.
HORIZONTAL is always adjusted to the current exhibition space… constructed by human beings.
Stills: Hayward Gallery, London;
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul;
Salon Dahlman, Berlin;
Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City;
Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg;
Lichtsicht Triennale, Bad Rothenfelde.

Potentiality For Love


POTENTIALITY FOR LOVE (2018)
Moving image sculpture in 3 parts:
#1 – Angular video sculpture
#2 – Two research tables
#3 – Vertical single channel projection
POTENTIALITY FOR LOVE turns attention to those human emotions that could serve as a foundation for dismantling the hierarchical structures between living things, thereby engendering a turn towards non-humans and the recognition of others, with the potential for empathy and love.
Art and Science Biennale, Museum of Art, Daejeon, South Korea, 2022
New Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia, CLOSED Feb 24, 2022
National Gallery of Art, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2021
Secrets of Alidades, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 2021
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea, 2021
Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany, 2019
Serlachius Museums, Mänttä, 2018
M-Museum, Leuven, Belgium, 2018
Biennale of Sydney, Australia, 2018
Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris, 2018
More

RECENT publications


FRANCESCA WOODMAN & EIJA-LIISA AHTILA
On Visuality and the Presentation of Emotions in the Space of Media Art
The phenomenological encounter with the works of the American photographer Francesca Woodman and the Finnish video artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila forms the focus of the publication. The relationship between the body and space is explored in the context of perception and emotion, making use of theories of embodiment as well as recent research in emotion studies.

DADDY AND THE MUSCLE ACADEMY ON BLURAY IN USA & CANADA
Zeitgeist Films and Kino Lorber has released digitally restored and remastered version of Daddy and the Muscle Academy by Ilppo Pohjola on BluRay in the US and Canada.
"Tom of Finland is one of the major icons of the gay world. Taking inspiration from his World War II army days, 1950s American bodybuilding magazines and biker movies, Tom’s erotic drawings of uniformed and leather-clad beefcake have become a permanent fixture of 20th-century iconography.
Completed shortly before his death in 1991, Daddy and the Muscle Academy: The Life, Art and Times of Tom of Finland is the definitive, ground-breaking documentary of the man and the artist. Newly restored from the original camera negative, it combines interviews with Tom himself, commentary from his “leather men”, hundreds of original drawings, and fantasy scenes inspired by his work."

RETROSPECTIVE CATALOGUE OF AHTILA’S WORKS IN SPANISH
On the occasion of Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s major retrospective in Spain, MAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo of A Coruña is publishing together with DARDO, the first Spanish language catalogue by Eija-Liisa Ahtila, presenting a cross section of her work.
The catalogue spans over 200 pages of museum views of installed works, photographic works, film stills and screen captures. The catalogue features a previously unpublished text by art historian Hanna Johansson The Temporal and Ecological Sphere of Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s Film and The Moving Image as Witness by author Mieke Bal. Studies on the Ecology of Drama, Horizontal, Anthropomorphic Exercises on Film, The Annunciation, The House, Today and Dog Bites have been photographed at MAC and these never seen photographs are included, together with views from other shows by the artist.

ECOLOGIES OF DRAMA – TEXT ANTHOLOGY PUBLISHED IN USA
Albright-Knox Art Gallery has published a 300-page anthology featuring texts on Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s moving image works. The anthology, titled "Eija-Liisa Ahtila: ECOLOGIES OF DRAMA – Collected Writings, Interviews, and Scripts", features a great variety of essays and conversational articles by various authors, as well as the synopses and scripts of all Ahtila’s moving image works.
The anthology is an excellent source book of Ahtila's works, and describes how she has been a groundbreaking artist since the beginning of the 1990s, pioneering in creating a new genre in contemporary art, the multi-channel moving image installation.
PUBLICATION IN-PRODUCTION


POTENTIALITIES OF LOVE
An extended, thematic book inspired by Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s sculptural installation.
Potentialities of Love reflects on themes central to Ahtila’s artistic practice. It expands on the visual approach of her thoughts, using her latest hybrid cinematic installation, Potentiality for Love as a starting point.
It focuses on Otherness, Animal Lives, and Love/Compassion, and discusses how these three themes are interlinked. —1st part of the book is providing a brief sketch for a historical/philosophical background of the construction of the concept of the animal as the other. 2nd part discusses embodiedness and vulnerability, from the point of animals’ experience and biographies. 3rd part is returning to the theme of love and its connection with the other, and expands on the artist’s work in relation to an aesthetics of love.
These themes are central to Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s artistic thinking, especially as she has been engaging with animals’ experience and intersubjectivity between animals and humans. Creatureliness traverses all her work — how can the sense of creaturely exposure and mutual belongingness be evoked in moving image installations; is it possible for this sense to become a basis for an ethics of nonviolence?
Potentialities of Love is ’an intellectual art book’, which by using variety of image sources and contemporary graphics design approach —combined with high end print quality— elevates the book format to a level of an independent work of art.



RECENT TV screening



AFTER EVERYTHING by PEKKA SASSI
An encounter with the unknown in extreme circumstances.
AFTER EVERYTHING tells a story of two boys in a world where brutality, inhumanity and killing an angel are commonplace and part of everyday routine. It leads to a situation in which brutality is victorious, yet beyond total destruction there is also room for a new beginning.
The atmosphere of doom is emphasised by the combination of black-and-white footage, harsh settings and industrial noise music.
AFTER EVERYTHING is a melancholy song of destruction, yet there is hope even in its finality. It is a tragedy that dives so deep into darkness that one almost runs out of breath, but ultimately light is victorious, blinding and purifying.
RECENT Photographic work


HORIZONTAL is a six-image portrait of a living spruce. —The work is a record of its existence as a living organism, or perhaps more to the point, a presentation of the difficulty of perceiving and recording a spruce tree with the methods of visual documentation invented by humans.
More
Some additional installation views, photos, snapshots and phonepics from Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s shows – before, during and after the opening itself.
More


RECENT affairs from the archives


A LIE NEEDS ONLY TO BE REPEATED
TEN TIMES TO BECOME TRUE
(English translation)
VALHE TARVITSEE...
by EIJA-LIISA AHTILA
1987 | Text installation on bulletin boards and stickers


POTENTIALITY FOR LOVE
‘The human’ is achieved by escaping or repressing not just its animal origins in nature, the biological, and the evolutionary, but more generally by transcending the bonds of materiality and embodiment altogether.”
Moving image sculpture in 3 silent parts dealing with the potential for empathy and love towards other living beings.
More



Studies on the Ecology of Drama




STUDIES ON THE ECOLOGY OF DRAMA
“How to depict living things? How to approach them? How to convey a different way of being, another being's world? How to make it into a continuous event that becomes part of our idea of reality?”
4-channel projected moving image installation and single-channel film that uses the methods of presentation as a path to the company of other living beings. It expands upon the issues of ecological moving image narrative explored in her previous works – the focus in this work being on presentation, imaging and imagination in the context of the moving image.
Installation
Film


BEYOND THE BLACK HOLE
OF THE SUN
Hand painted celluloid animation with CGI.
Ambient abstractions for 3D SILVER SCREEN or 2D PUBLIC SPACE with musique concrète. – In production.
4k digital remastering project

4K/2K DIGITAL RESTORATION PROJECT
Crystal Eye is remastering all existing works, installations and films by Eija-Liisa Ahtila and Ilppo Pohjola. Detailed digital restoration is executed from the original camera and laboratory negatives and the original audio sources to reach maximum image and audio quality – without losing artist's original intention and the film look.
tom of finland
ABOUT
CRYSTAL EYE – 33 years of innovative genre-defining art / installation / film production.
Eija-Liisa Ahtila
Installation, film and other art productions for Eija-Liisa Ahtila.
Ilppo Pohjola
Film, installation and other projects for Ilppo Pohjola.
crystal ace!
Misc. productions for other artists.
NEWS
News about/related to our works.
MAP
Exhibitions, screening and related events of works produced by Crystal Eye around the world.
INFO
CRYSTAL EYE
Kristallisilmä Oy
Lämmittäjänkatu 4A
00880 Helsinki, Finland
Tel. +358 9 694 2308
info@crystaleye.fi

In Spotlight
SHARING... constantly under construction
HORIZONTAL
Axis of Horizon
Instagram Live!
Axis of Horizon
The Korea Times
Nature offers healing amid
virus pandemic
The Korea Herald
Among the Trees
The Guardian
Among the Trees
The Times
Sprawling evocation of elusiveness
and majesty of trees
Standard

POSTHUMAN CINEMA
ELA online @ MGG NY
Xitbitmagazie
Posthuman Cinema
U-jazdowski
The Stars Down to Earth
Berlinare – Forum Expanded

LOVE @ SYDNEY
Highlights from the Biennale
Art Asia Pacific
21st Biennale of Sydney
Frieze
LOVE IN PARIS
A Time in a Young Fantasy’s Life
Flaunt
Potentiality for Love
Galleries Now
Potentiality for Love
Inferno Magazine
LOVE IN FINNISH
Miksi tunnemme rakkautta vain...?
Helsingin Sanomat

ESSAYS
Hanna Johansson |
The Temporal and Ecological Sphere
ELA's Films
Cary Wolfe | No Immunity
The Biopolitical Worlds of ELA
Alison Butler |
ELA's Cinematic Worlds
Mieke Bal | Losing It
Politics of the Other (Medium)
Elizabeth Bronfen |
The Fragility of The Quotidian
ELA's Work with Death
Tarja Laine | Affective Images
The House by ELA
Kaja Silverman |
How to Stage The Death of God
ELA at Tate Modern
Daniel Birnbaum | Crystals of Time
ELA's Extended Cinema

INTERVIEWS
Florian Langhammer | How do we
picture the world around us
ELA In the Studio
Anna Iltnere |
The Viewer is Not Yet There
Interview with ELA
Eija-Liisa Ahtila by Cary Wolfe
BOMB Magazine conversation
Stephen Knudsen |
Breaking the Rules of Storytelling
Conversation with ELA
Lena Essling | What is the 1st Image
ELA in Conversation
Chrissie Iles | Thinking in Film
ELA in Conversation

BLOG
Niranjan Chatterjee |
Themes, techniques and execution
Short films and video-installations by ELA

SOME SHOWS
Ecology of Drama | MGG
Necsus
The Annunciation | Guggenheim
Guggenheim Web Bilbao
ELA | Albright-Knox
Buffalo News
Creatures | Davis Museum
Huffington Post
Olentoja | Davies Museum
Big Red & Shiny
Horizontal | MGG
Art in America
ELA | Carré d'Art
Artforum
ELA | Moderna Museet
Eyeline Publishing
ELA | Kiasma
Frieze
ELA | Jeu de Paume
Artforum
The Wind | MoMA
Press release
ELA | Tate Modern
The Guardian

ELA | NEW YORK TIMES
The Annunciation + Horizontal | MGG
Where is Where? | MoMA
Where is Where? | MGG
Women on the Verge of a Breakdown
The Wind | MoMA
The House | CGG
The Wind | CGG
Consolation Service | CGG

TOM OF FINLAND
Jean Paul Gaultier | Greetings
Daddy and the Muscle Academy Premiere
Daddy and the Muscle Academy
DVDTalk – BluRay
Daddy and the Muscle Academy
DVDCompare – BluRay
Daddy and the Muscle Academy
Some old press from the archive

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
1 Plus 1 Plus 1 =
Difference between Past and Present

THEATRE OF THE MOTOR
Asphalto | Routemaster | Remix Live
Musique Machine
Routemaster | Theatre of the Motor
According to Dromology by Paul Virilio
Asphalto
Aria for 13 Cars, Girls & Gas Stations
The Voice of Shell | Asphalto
Some 60s & 70s TV commercials

SYMBOLIC DOCUMENTARY
Amorphous Questions of Emotion
P(l)ain Truth
Director's Truth
With director's notes from the archive

GESAMTKUNSTWERK
Ilppo of Finland
Hätkähdyttävä tuotanto saapui DVD:lle
Pohjola
Or Eulogies of Excess
In The Cut
Automotive Ultraspeed
Transsexual Surgery
More Essays
On Ilppo Pohjola’s Works
