Lucid Dreams
Lucid Dreams is a retrospective exhibition of photographs by lighting designer, visual artist Mikki Kunttu. Kunttu has built a long and international career in theatre, media and light art. The exhibition also presents Kunttu as a photographer. The impulse to photograph stage works came from Kunttu's desire to shoot works in a different way from traditional magazine and programme images, as part of his own artistic process. Over the years, the photographs have become an extensive and detailed record of Kunttu's work.
"Photography plays a central role in my work. I feel that there is practically nothing left of these productions but these images. The images, in their own creative power, can take what we saw on stage one step further – to something we could not see on stage. So my creative process continues both in the shooting and in the post-production of the image. The final photograph is a mental image, not a documentary."
Lucid Dreams has previously been shown at Tampere Hall, Pyhtään Kulttuuritalo and Espoo Cultural Centre. At the Theatre Museum, the exhibition of nearly 40 framed photographic prints is complemented by a miniature model of the Snow Queen ice ballet with video projections and a spectacular semicircular collage-like projection in the Maneesi.
The exhibition is open to the public from 19 January to 2 June 2024.
Mikki Kunttu is an award-winning lighting and set designer and visual artist working in the performing arts, entertainment, television and visual arts.
Kunttu has worked as a designer on over 100 contemporary dance productions around the world. His collaborators include Tero Saarinen, Jorma Elo, Jorma Uotinen, Carolyn Carlson, Jiří Kylián, Akram Khan and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Kunttu has also collaborated repeatedly with Cirque du Soleil, Finnish National Opera and Ballet, Norwegian National Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet and Boston Ballet. In addition to dance, he works in the fields of light music, opera, television and the arts, among others.
In 2005, Kuntu was awarded a five-year government artist's grant. The following year, he was awarded the prestigious Bessie Prize in New York for his lighting design for Tero Saarinen and Akram Khan. In 2007, Kunttu received the Säde Prize from the Finnish Association of Light and Sound Designers and the Koura Prize for his visualisation of the Eurovision Song Contest in Helsinki. In 2010, MTV3 awarded Kunttu the Venla award. In autumn 2022, Kunttu's 50th birthday was celebrated at Tampere Hall with a festival dedicated to his distinguished career.