Exhibitions and events

Artcenter Ahjo

31.5.-18.6.2023

Lahden Taidegraafikot (Sysi-space)

Helena Tuura (Hehku-space)

Miia Jääskeläinen (Hiili-space)

Alexander Salvesen (Kytö/Liekki-space)

“You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that” -Samuel Beckett

In the exhibition Here is always elsewhere, Tuomas Ollikainen shows fresh works of sculpture, and series of photos from past years.

Kuuntele lisää: Tuomas Ollikainen kertoo näyttelystään Here is always elsewhere

In Elina Priha’s exhibition you are met with an ensemble consisting of textile pieces, ceramic installations and a work of video art.

“In the summer of 2021, I spent two weeks in solitude on an island that belongs to my maternal family. The island is called ‘Kalmonsaari’ which means Island of Dead Bodies. Despite the ominous name, some of my fondest childhood memories are from this island. Our family has spent summer holidays there since the cottage was built by my grandfather in 1972. During the two weeks I spent alone on the island, I reflected on my relationship with the place and its inhabitants. Though I consider Kalmonsaari as one of the places I am most familiar with; on the island I am still a visitor and I have no knowledge of what happens to/in the island in winter. The island and I were both familiar strangers to each other. Childhood memories, imagination, past and present started to blend in interesting ways where the boundaries of ‘self’ are no longer so clear or rigid.”

The exhibition shows a tactile collection of iterations based on these embodied memories.

Kuuntele lisää: Elina Priha kertoo näyttelystään

The exhibition explores the hiding places of animals and people. Animals might have a camouflage to help them to hide from predators. People could have a some kind of hiding place to catch one’s breath in the middle of busy weekdays. The works are sculpture and mixed media paintings.

Kuuntele lisää: Taidelainaamo Parren Kuukauden taiteilija Minna Salonen kertoo näyttelystään

“Helsinki”- a beautiful city through Dino Hien’s eye and emotion

Dino Hien’s heart beats with a passion for the art of capturing cities, and Helsinki has become his muse. With his innate talent and keen eye, he has crafted a stunning collection of artwork that not only portrays Helsinki’s physical beauty but also evokes the emotions and feelings it stirs within him.

“Helsinki” collection is a mesmerizing manifestation of Dino’s love for this captivating and beautiful city.

The sense of a space arises from encounters with architecture, light, sound, materials, and the surface textures, which can be felt and observed by different senses. It is an intimate and bodily experience that is special in each space. Many of these sensory experiences may remain on an unconscious level, although atmospheric, mood-sensing visualization happens faster than detailed, conscious observation.

The starting point of Inka Bell‘s exhibition Shift is the movement, layers of time, and subtle changes felt by the artist at Forum Box. While working, these observations were transformed into new sensations inspired by the process. The whole, which started from concrete spatial elements, aims for ever wider unconscious levels through the works.

The exhibition consists of paper sculptures in which change and time appear as movement and rhythmicity between materials, colors, light, shapes, and weight: unique and clearly defined, back and forth and flickering or almost imperceptible. In the new exhibition, the repeated sharp and straight angles recurrent in Bell’s works, which are often limited to a rectangular shape, occasionally soften towards rounder and smoothier shapes. The apparent lightness of the paper is counterbalanced by the weight of the metal frames that limit the movement.

For the viewer, perceiving these events requires physical participation and changing one’s location. You have to reach, crouch, lean and twist around the works. Only the sense of movement makes the changes visible.

Inka Bell’s works escape verbalization or external meanings. What is essential instead are the sensory spaces they create between the viewer, the work, place and time.

Riikka Thitz, curator

Least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. Humans are classified into this category as being one of the most common and widespread mammals. The exhibition consists mainly of sculptures of women made of plaster and ceramic. There are also few animal species and one boy present. The artworks display subjects such as the diversity of nature, holiness and social media. The focus is on the human-centered attitude that sees that nature exists only for humans.

Marie named sculpture diverges from other sculptures by its colourful appearance. During the covid pandemia I stepped out of my comfort zone and started to learn oil painting (layered technique) with the help of my colleague Maria Laine. Earlier  I’ve been concentrating  mainly on form and painted my sculptures with different shades of white.

Marie describes the depletion of biodiversity. The work is inspired by the Red Book of IUCN and the hairstyles of French aristocracy in 18th century.  The plants and animals found in Marie’s hair and body are categorized as threatened with few exceptions. In the highest place on the top of Marie’s haircut the Mandarin duck is nesting. It is the true beauty of the bird world and an abundant species just like humans. Critically endangered (CR) European Eel is wrapped around Marie. In Marie’s haircut can be found endangered flower species of Finnish nature such as Spring Cinquefoil, Eastern Pasque Flower and Narrow-leaved Helleborine as well as common wild and carden flowers and hybrid flowers created by the artist.
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Marianne Siri (b. 1985) is a sculptor and ceramic craftsman by background. She is a member of the Finnish Sculptors’ Association. Her former profession is an environmental technology engineer, which is why her works often deal with issues related to the environment, such as human dominance over nature and other animal species. Siri’s sculptures are classic and realistic in style and are strongly tied to the time.

Hyperborea is an ancient Greek myth of the origin of the North Wind in a far away land in the north
where the sun is said to set once a year. The exhibition aims to juxtapose the Arctic environment with the
presumed mental landscape of personalities who lived and explored these extreme regions. What kind of a
personality gravitates towards these conditions and does the harsh environment depict the mental
landscape of these people? The portraits in the exhibition aim to draw new interpretations from photos taken of known Arctic explorers and personalities.
The pieces in the exhibition have been produced by drawing and painting with ink, brushes and airbrush.
In the method a paper is creased in a specific manner suiting to the aimed result. The technique resembles the surrealist method of frottage in which the artist rubs out pictures of objects and shapes under a paper
or canvas. Similarly, a brush dipped in ink draws out forms and narratives from the creased plane as the
mind wanders freely in the empty paper. The creases in the paper are like topography from which a
mountain range or a rugged portrait can spring out of.

Teemu Kangas (b. 1980, Kuopio) is a visual artist living and working in Tampere, Finland. Kangas is
interested in the intersectioning of internal mental images and outer reality. His primary artistic method is a certain type of frottage in which drawing/painting with ink on paper gives out impressions of three
dimensional shapes and textures. Kangas has an M.F.A in visual arts from the University of Arts in
Helsinki. He also works as a licensed nurse in an adolescent psychiatric unit with especially difficult to
care patients.

The exhibition has received support from the Arts Promotion Centre Finland

Photo:
Arktinen hurtta (Sepp), 2022.

Opening 15.6., 17!

”Skin”-solo exhibition follows Markkanen’s previous solo exhibitions theme exhibiting jewelry works that
draw their inspiration from the human body. Works presented in the exhibition are from the last few years
and have themes such as the skin microbiome and body trends in the media.

“Skin Flora” series was done with a grant from the Finnish Cultural Foundation North Savo Regional fund in 2021. It explores the bacteria living on our skin and ponders on the relationships between ourselves and the skin microbiome.

“Carved from the skins of the girls we once were” is a series of brooches that takes a dive into aging, the
cycle of body trends in media and girlhood. One interesting subject to the artist was the term “preventative botox” which is injections aimed for 20-year-old women, and which enforces the idea that a woman with wrinkles is less of a person than a woman who doesn’t have them. This series was done in 2022 with the support of the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.

Minna Markkanen (MFA in Gemstone and Jewelry), born 1989, has been active in the jewelry art field for over a decade. Her works are balanced yet vibrant combinations of material use that arranges from plastics to clay, from wood to discarded paper and to everything in between them.

Photo:
“The folds between flowers and youth”, 2022.

Opening 7.6., 18-20!

Group art exhibition

Leena Illukka, Silja Puranen & Virpi Vesanen 
Nyrjähdys, venähdys, murtuma

Free entry, welcome!

Photo: Silja Puranen, Plastic blossom, 2022.

Artist Maija Kumpulainen-Sokka (born 1943, Jämsänkoski) turns 80 years old.  She graduated from the Vienna Academy of Arts in 1968. She  has lived in Jyväskylä since 1974.

“The starting point of my paintings, as well as my graphics, is the view,  nature and observation. Seasons and different times of the day make my observations variable and very interesting and make you want to realize them by painting and drawing.”
Maija kumpulainen-Sokka

Maisa Kivi (born 1941, Ylivieska) lives and works in Saarijärvi.

“Retrospective: paintings and graphics from the 1960s to the present day.
The last five paintings were created this spring. First came the names of the poems, then the poems gradually, then the paintings.

The most popular theme of my ten years as an artist has been a person in motion, at rest, naked, clothed, dancing, physical, soul portrait.  The techniques are diverse: woodcut, lithography, watercolor, oil- and acrylic paintings and guerda seca clay paintings technique.” Maisa Kivi

The exhibition consists of fresco and watercolour paintings, lithographs and a colouring book for children that is free to take.

Einari Hyvönen paints representational images of contemporary reality. And that reality is not on the edge of a field or in the thicket of a forest. Hyvönen’s paintings are set in the depths of the digital world: they take place in the twisted parallel reality of popular culture.

Kuuntele lisää Galleria Halmetojasta!

In my paintings, insulation boards, electrical insulation and bales of animal feed are linked to the human body and its energy consumption. For example, sweat serves as a painted sign of the flows in the body. The word “HIIT” in the name of the exhibition is the abbreviation for high-intensity interval training and, when pronounced, also contains a reference to heat. I see exercise as an invigorating self-motivated activity and enjoyable waste of energy but also as a form of self-control that may include obsessive-compulsive behavior.

My works deal with compelling needs related to the consumption of energy, painting and exercise, compulsive repeated actions and the related outbursts. I create strange and exaggerated images of our relationship with energy and tools through which energy flows into our daily lives and through our bodies and changes them.

As a child, when I looked at a moss-covered stone wall full of holes and complex structures, I saw a breathtaking multi-layered city of tiny creatures, their homes and mines, gardens and paths, endless possibilities.

The Goblin Geology, Troll Romance exhibition features made-up places and their inhabitants. The works are based on the exciting feeling that there is something very small in a large and complex environment. Imagination influenced by video games produces images of fantastic worlds whose stagnant warmth invites you to join an adventure in front of something remotely familiar, yet unknown.

The places depicted in the paintings can be simultaneously seen from many different perspectives, revealing more than just one side of them. The two- and three-dimensional spaces meet instinctively, forming an incomplete thought of each place with room to grow and wander.

It is good to have many personae, to make collections, sew up several, collect them as we go along in life. As we become older, with such a collection at our behest, we find we can portray any aspect of self most anytime we wish. However, at some point, most particularly as one grows into and past mid-life and on into old age, one’s personas shift and meld in mysterious ways. Eventually, there is a kind of ‘meltdown,’ a loss of personae complete, thereby revealing what would, in its greatest light, be called the “true self.”

(Author and psychoanalyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés in Women Who Run with the Wolves, 1992)

The works included in the Personas exhibition were created as I examined the questions of identity, roles and self. For example, I was wondering if one self is just an illusion. Perhaps I am a constantly changing representation of me, formed by the sensations, observations and memories of a specific moment. Is the process of finding oneself a pointless and hopeless effort? Is it possible that a person’s self is at the same time a subject and an object – an observer and the subject of observation. Or does this require at least two selves?

The Personas exhibition features colorful self-portraits that I took at home in Töölö. The persons in the images change rapidly, but I feel that they are all equally real and genuine.

KUOLEMA is a one-hour video work that includes all my unreleased songs from a period of ten years. A few years ago, I was very ill and when I got my diagnosis, my first thought was:
“What is going to happen to all my unfinished songs?” For some reason, one of my greatest concerns at that moment was that the songs would just stay on hard drives forever. So I started to develop a way to “release” them from the hard drives. This resulted in the work that covers a period of ten years from the time I started to make music to the moment I got my diagnosis. This takes one hour and includes 183 songs. One second corresponds to one day in my life. The songs start playing on the day they were made and are played at a normal speed from beginning to end. At the beginning, there may only be a couple of overlapping songs, but towards the end there are several because every year I have become more and more active.

The video part consists of an accurate spectrogram, creating a visual representation of the audio in real time, as well as the working titles and creation dates of the songs.

The songs playing at the same time may seem chaotic at first, but if you give it some time, the waterfall-like soundscape may offer a hypnotic and captivating experience. The work is a journey, in which the amount of audio content and visual stimuli increase towards the end.

Main place artist: Johanna Mäkitalo is a visual artist from Korpilahti. Nature and landscape are the main subjects in her art. The exhibition Ajelehtivat consists of oil paintings of plants, birds, clouds, and insects from Lake Päijänne.

Summer place artist: Anitta Asunta-Plane’s exhibition reflects her feelings about moving back to the middle of Finland after living in France for 35 years.

In her works, Paula Ollikainen deals with ways of perceiving reality. The starting point of the exhibition has been three-dimensional modeling of natural situations and events.

In Ollikainen’s paintings, the framing of natural science dioramas takes the viewer to the edge of a new interpretation. Through different compositions, we see parts of the world that we have not experienced before. Imitations of nature, built and illuminated with artificial light, are one of the forms of representing reality. The themes of the paintings are also more broadly related to ideas about what is original, what is true, and how the delineation of something can colour the truth. An interesting consideration from the point of view of painting is painting as a form of sharing and repeating observations.

Paula Ollikainen (born 1973) is a visual artist working in Tampere. Her main technique is oil painting. Ollikainen graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts, in 2014, and has held several solo and group exhibitions in Finland and abroad. Her work is included in public and private collections.

The exhibition Underflow by Minni Havas (b. 1983) is a spatial composition that follows the logic of poetry, ignoring consistency. Havas explores the underflow within us: hidden emotions and subconscious messages. Illustrated textiles, coloured pencil drawings and oil paintings engage in dialogue in this fascinating display. The exhibition also features Sammutin tulta sumulla (“I fought fire with vapour”, 2021), a book of poems written and illustrated by Havas. The use of multiple art forms invites visitors to approach the riddle with an open mind. What is it all about? Is there something we should solve or understand?

There are photorealistic images that, to our surprise, we cannot quite grasp; they slip beyond our reach like shimmering waves. There are electric, restless, wriggling sentences. There are colours and sounds that resemble a love poem. There’s a cherry. Our minds, bound by logical reasoning, are disturbed, but at the same time, the detachment feels liberating and rewarding. The underflow smoulders with a deep flame.

Minni Havas has created illustrations for the fashion and music industries for clients such as Vimma and Maison Margiela. She is currently studying painting at the Academy of Fine Arts.

minnihavas.com

Words: Veera Pekkinen

The Textile Artist of the Year is Laura Isoniemi

The Textile Artist of the Year award is the most prestigious textile art award in Finland. Laura Isoniemi is particularly praised for her pedagogy that encourages creative thinking and innovative design methods.

Laura Isoniemi (b.1962), a Master of Arts, art educator and textile artist, is being honoured for her pioneering and visionary work as a teacher of textile art and developer of design methods. Isoniemi has spent thirty years teaching art and design at Aalto University. She has also taught at numerous other institutions of higher education, both in Finland and abroad, promoting the internationalisation and multidisciplinarity of design education.

Giving the award, the Textile Artists’ Association (TEXO) particularly highlights Isoniemi’s pedagogy, which encourages creative thinking, and innovative design methods, that have influenced the work and thinking of many generations of designers. The methods taught by Isoniemi stem from her own artistic work, which is based on experimentalism and systems thinking.

‘This recognition means a lot to me because it is a recognition valued by my peers. I have had a long career as a freelancer and teacher, working with my heart and expanding my professional skills by further educating myself,’ says Isoniemi.

‘I have taught a wide, multidisciplinary and international group of students on what surface design, design and creativity are and how to express them. I have found my work important and meaningful because I consider the things I teach important and of general interest to the wider community.’

A multidisciplinary designer

Laura Isoniemi is an expert in teaching combining design, art and science. Teacher exchanges and teaching in China have given her a wealth of valuable experience, which she has used to develop multidisciplinary teaching methods.

Isoniemi has designed a wide range of printed fabric patterns, products and public textile works. She has had several solo exhibitions and participated in more than 70 group exhibitions in Finland and abroad. Isoniemi has compiled her extensive experience in teaching creativity and pattern design in the book Patterned Mind (Aalto ARTS Books, 2019).

She has also worked in international projects as a curator and producer in several exhibitions. The largest of these was Echoes – 100 Years in Finnish Design and Architecture, which toured five European countries during the centenary of Finland’s independence and attracted over 50 000 visitors.

Currently, Isoniemi teaches a multidisciplinary Crystal Flowers in the Hall of Mirrors course at Aalto University, a course which combines mathematics and art. The designer herself feels she can make a difference through teaching. Her ways of working are interaction, presence and encounter, tolerance and a humane approach to people – not forgetting curiosity.

After decades of teaching, she is now moving on to her own artistic expression with exhibitions and celebrating her Textile Artist of the Year nomination with a commemorative exhibition, Order and Principles.

‘In this exhibition I am returning to my roots in creative pattern design. In the works, I challenged myself and explored how to create as many different patterns as possible using just one colour and shape. I am a systems builder and I am fascinated by them. Making patterns is a way for me to structure ideas and get things in place, one pattern at a time. Dialogue with patterns is like a game; one change affects the whole pattern.’

Textile Artists TEXO Association is a professional association of textile artists and one of the member organisations of Ornamo Association. The Textile Artist of the Year has been awarded since 1981. The award ceremony and the opening of Isoniemi’s exhibition took place in the Väre building of Aalto University on 15 February.

Jazmin is a positive person, a psychic and tarot card reader. All her life she has tried to stay true to herself, paying no mind to those who wanted to tear her down. At 83, she plays an active part in her community, and her psychic abilities attract people from all around Australia.

Nicole Sullivan was awarded the 2019 Regional Producer Elevator Program supported by Screenworks, Create NSW and Screen Producers Australia. Nicole has worked across many roles in the creative sector across a wide range of platforms, ranging from Casting, Production, Associate Producing, Talent Managing, TVC, Film, TV
Drama/Comedy, Children’s Programs, Online, MV and Reality. Nicole wrote, produced, directed and edited her short film Quack, which was selected for the 2017 Byron Bay International Film Festival and was part of the production team on the ABC ME Drama Summer’s Day, and Casting Director on the award winning short film This River. Nicole has worked in many production roles with a number of production companies, local and international, over many different genres: Married at First Sight (Nine Network), Geordie Shore S17 (MTV), Australian Spartan (Seven Network), Russell Coight’s Aussie Adventures (Network Ten), The Ex Files (ABC Iview), Get Grubby TV (ABC KIDS), and Australian Ninja Warrior (Nine Network). Nicole has also worked on numerous TVC’s.A passionate storyteller, Nicole has written, produced and directed, with a number of creative projects in early development ranging from Children’s Entertainment to a Nordic Crime Thriller which is being supported by award
winning screenwriter Stuart Page. Nicole is hoping to shoot her original short drama Ann & Mick this coming summer.

Welcome to the exhibition opening on Thursday, May 25, from 5-7 pm!

The inspiration for Laura Lappi’s upcoming exhibition Palace Basilica are the grandeur of ancient basilicas, cathedrals, and medieval Scandinavian wooden structures. The sculptures comprise abstracted segments of various architectural structures, reminding of the sculptural properties of some of the world’s most renowned works of architecture. Through the series of sculptures Lappi addresses the topics of what these buildings and structures represent in our communities, since they are usually seen as the most expressive, the most permanent and the most influential and shape the way we live and think.

Laura Lappi has studied at the AKI Academy of Art and Design in The Netherlands. Currently she lives and works in New York. Lappi’s work has been exhibited  internationally, including solo exhibitions at Lorimoto gallery in New York and The Yard project space in Colorado. Her site-specific installation 7×7 (Hope) was installed in Flushing Meadows Corona Park in New York and commissioned by Art In The Parks NYC.

The exhibition has been supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland. The artist’s working has been supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Arts Promotion Centre Finland and Oskar Öflunds Stiftelse.

Nuutti Koskinen’s new video installation Primary Succession deals with the infrastructure of nature experience – environment as a historical weave of different production systems and ideologies.

Nuutti Koskinen is a Helsinki-based media artist working with and combining video, photography, and animation. Recurrent themes in his work are the use of language, metaphors, and the semantics of visual representation often applied to ecological and societal questions.

The exhibition has been supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland and the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

In the Trash themed Art Exhibition you can find recycled art and artworks that deal with pollution of the enviroment.

There is a nice variation of paintings, installations and sculptures.

The exhibition forwards the important message of excessive consumption, enviromental pollution and ecological values. It also brings alive the esthetic of waste.

Come and get inspired by the new life of trash.

“Lokki ja maski”-painying in the picture Eeva Raitio

Kuuntele lisää Galleria Tärinästä ja Roska-taidenäyttelystä!

Many, who have lived on the shores of the Baltic Sea or otherwise spent time remember decades ago how the sea water was clear and through it could be seen to the bottom. Nowadays, you can’t see much deeper than the surface in the Baltic Sea. How we treat nature is often equal to how we treat ourselves, as well as everything living – including other people. In the invisible depths of the subconscious, a lot of things accumulate during human life that we are not aware of, unless for some reason they have to be brought up separately. Our subconscious mind is like the Baltic Sea, under the surface of which huge amounts of different things have accumulated over time.    

The Under the surface exhibition features the views of a total of sixteen artists from three countries, with discoveries emerging from different depths beneath the surface, presented through various means of art. Paintings, sculptures and media art are included. The exhibition is a co-production of the Helsinki Artists’ Association, the Estonian Painters’ Association and the Lithuanian Artists’ Association.  

Artists:

Ilai Elias Lehto, Kirsi Kivivirta, Marjukka Korhonen, Siina Levonoja, Tiia Matikainen (Finland)

Liisi Eelmaa, Elis Saareväli, Angela Soop, Edgar Tedresaar, Alar Tuul, (Estonia)

Eglė Ganda Bogdanienė and Jolanta Vazalinskienė, Patricija Gilytė, Agnė Jonkutė, Julija Pociūtė, Lolita Tučinskaitė (Lithuania)

Curated by Satu Kalliokuusi (FI), Eeva Muona (FI), Tiiu Rebane (EE) and Evelina Januškaitė (LT).

This exhibition is the beginning of a three-year collaboration between three countries, which will be developed in the future to convey diverse know-how. Export, exchange and brokering activities in the visual arts include residencies, symposia, seminars and workshops in three countries in addition to exhibitions. 

John Nurminen Foundation – The Foundation has been awarded for its work as a conveyor of culture and producer of marine content. 

At the same time, in the summer months, the John Nurminen Foundation is implementing an exhibition called The Unknown Baltic Sea in the Suomenlinna Record Hall. Other events, such as workshops, have also been planned in the implementation of which the Helsinki Artists’ Association is involved. The exhibition, through art and science, draws attention to a valuable issue called the Baltic Sea, which must now be saved. The Under the Surface exhibition is also an independent part of the Unknown Baltic Sea entity. 

Laura Konttinen’s exhibition When the Blackbirds Return is a travelogue where fragments of stories and staged imagery intertwine. The exhibition consists of a series of photographs, an installation, and an autofictional text called Travelogue.

The starting point of the exhibition is an old photograph found amongst Konttinen’s late grandmother Sylvia’s possessions. The photo, taken in 1920, depicts a house in the town of Salem, USA, where the artist’s grandmother was born. The exact address of the house is no longer known, but it gradually becomes an obsession for the artist, who, one hundred years after the photo was taken, embarks on a search for it. The resulting photographic series, born from this journey, is a collection of landscapes where real places, fairytales, her grandmother’s stories, and legends of the Salem Witch Trials from the 17th century, all interweave.

The visual language of the work echoes the logic of nostalgia, where the distant past is dressed in a romanticised attire, bustling with symbolism and vivid exaggeration. The exhibition’s photographs are the result of a slow and meticulous craftsmanship. Konttinen constructs the landscapes of her artworks as temporary compositions for the camera, utilising materials such as photographic prints, leather scraps from flea markets, clay-molded objects, and plant illustrations cut from books inherited from her grandmother. Through carefully considered angles and lighting, a surreal image is born, simultaneously staged yet genuinely present before the camera’s lens. In the exhibition reality and fantasy merge seamlessly and overlap with the artist’s own personal journey.

For a long time, the central themes in Leena Mäki-Patola’s practice have been luck, misfortune and unpredictability as well as the elements earth, air, blood, water and vegetation. The contents of the work arise from everyday world events, to which Mäki-Patola reacts sensitively. Time and timelessness, good and evil, silence and noise, peace and destruction are present in the Sisäkkäisiä maailmoita exhibition.

Kuuntele lisää KOUTA-gallerian näyttelystä

MUU Helsinki Contemporary Art Centre’s AFS23 exhibition includes performative works by artists Siina Levonoja, Parsa Kamehkhosh and Minka Heino. Along with the exhibition, MUU streams virtual discussions and art program, which you can participate in any part of Finland.

Presented projects are “Aina ja uudestaan (Always and again)” by Siina Levonoja, “Saturdays” by Parsa Kamehkhosh, and “Umpu (textual performances)” by Minka Heino.

The exhibition includes many events, also online. Please see detailed information at “Events” calendar.

Siina Levonoja is a visual artist who lives and works in Helsinki. Levonoja’s diverse practice includes performative interventions and installations, interspecies art and sculpture. The closest material to her is fired and unfired clay. Levonoja has participated in group exhibitions and organized solo exhibitions since 2016. Levonoja graduated with an MA from Aalto University (ARTS), Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art (ViCCA) in 2019.

Parsa Kamehkhosh is a visual, and performance artist, based in Helsinki. Kamehkhosh works across the media, ranging from sculpture to installation and performance art, and has mostly been exhibited in Europe, the Middle East, and the US. His interest in materials, objects, and everyday aesthetics led him to study industrial design at Tehran University of Fine Arts, from there to Stockholm to pursue Aesthetics and Meaning-making at Konstfack College of Arts, Crafts, and Design, and then to explore Visual Culture, Curating, and Contemporary Arts at Aalto University.

Minka Heino graduated from the Art School Maa in 2016, and from University of Helsinki as a literary therapy instructor 2019. She has organized solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions since 2014. Heino has published several literary works and is an experienced artist interviewer. She is active in organizations in both visual arts and literature, e.g. a member of Hiap artist’s board since 2020 and chairman the Aphorism Association of Finland  since 2018. She is also the founder of Minkart gallery.

Kuuntele lisää: Minka Heino kertoo näyttelyn teoksista

Anna Niskanen’s solo exhibition Oyster, in Hippolyte’s gallery space, presents a collection of hand-printed photomontages that transform the old cinema into a water-filled room. Water surrounds us and flows within us – the water in our bodies supports us. The movement, shimmer, and sound of moving water remind us of our origins.

The materiality and surface of the large-scale, unique works emphasise the physicality and labour of the process. The cyanotype, dating back almost 200 years, is a printing process in which a light-sensitive emulsion is applied to paper, exposed to ultraviolet light, and finally washed with water. After exposure, a Prussian blue image is formed due to oxidation.

Various waterscapes blend together in the exhibition space. While individual sheets appear abstract, placing them side by side in their entirety reveals new images of the element. The photographs—captured at sea, on shores, of streams, waterfalls, and puddles—serve as a starting point for the artworks. The edited pictures of nature oscillate between memories and imagination.

The collages feature photographs taken during Niskanen’s residencies abroad, where she encountered different bodies of water. Recently, Niskanen has also travelled by sea. The movement from one place to another can become a transitional space that offers a unique opportunity to observe the surrounding environment and nature. Niskanen employs traditional methods of photography and printmaking to reflect on the significance of photography as a means of preserving memories and as a source of imagination.

The accompanying story, by Helen Korpak, suggests viewing the works as suspended scenes played by natural forces.

Liinu Grönlund reflects on a horse’s role in her exhibition Atlas. The exhibition is a poetic and personal exploration of a horse’s significance, which is part of a broader theme in her work. Although Grönlund is rarely involved with horses anymore, they often occupy her thoughts.

Her earliest memories of horses involve drawing them with her grandmother and modelling them in clay. Her grandmother was never satisfied with her own drawings of horses and would redraw them, again and again. Grönlund sees a connection between the difficulty of drawing horses and the  impossibility  of understanding another species’s experience. The exhibition at Hippolyte Studio comprises various images of horses that attempt to approach the animal—including photographs, drawings, and video.

Liinu Grönlund’s contemplation on animals and war converged when she discovered old photographs among the belongings of a deceased relative, captured by their father of dead humans and horses from the front lines. In her essayistic video work, Grönlund intertwines images and memories of horses with observations of the remnants of war infiltrating everyday life. The horse is like a ghost from the past among us. The camera calmly observes a herd of horses living in their species-typical way.

Hands search for forgotten images of horses in boxes and flea markets. These hands both care for and restrict,  reinforcing human superiority over animals. Grönlund has always been fascinated by old photographs and is interested in the associations that arise when comparing them to present-day images and events.

For my exhibition, I have painted moody, nocturnal landscapes depicting all kinds of people trying to find out how to get along in this strange and ever challenging world of ours. I believe we can find ways to journey through, if we do so together and not alone. My works are mostly black and white, mainly painted with Chinese ink on paper or canvas.

Featured image: ”I can be your Superman today”, 2022, mixed media on canvas, 50×65 cm

Why Green Is Not a Primary Colour? PART II  exhibition by artists Jari Järnström, Laura Nurro and Tomi Åberg focuses on a curious question posed by a child about the characteristics of the colour green. This exhibition is a continuation of a previous exhibition with no goal to get answers to the said question but to further ponder the colour green as well as the feelings, thoughts or concepts that it yields.

Vernissage 18:00 – 20:00

Promenade Gallery is closed 22. – 26.6.

Sándor Vály: Retablos. AV-installation – with Julia Heéger soprano.

The Retablos project is a journey into the world of the shadows of human life.

The starting point of the project has been numerous paintings that have been made from the story Susanna and the elders throughout the history of art. Taru Kallio’s paintings are complex ecosystems where the creatures of dreams, nightmares, and fantasies live. The work is based on long-term artistic research where she deals with the idea of the body, sexuality, and healing. She has been influenced by early feminist science fiction such as Ursula K. Le Guin.

Opening 6.6. at 5-7 pm
Meet the Artist 15.6.

These are true at the same time:

I´m a shower

I`m a hamburger

one you crave but one that gets left to rot on the kitchen table.

I`m a shower.

I´m an overnight hamburger

These are true at the same time.

And the most important thing about these is time:

Here´s a burger in the shower

– you either eat it or forget it.

This is what´s intresting right now.

What even is inauthentcity?

Kuuntele lisää näyttelystä: Sofi Häkkinen kertoo teoksestaan Estranged