ELINA BROTHERUS - Spaces and Places

 ‘Spaces and Places’ is a combination of outdoor and indoor spaces, of gazes at and away from. In the pictures in the exhibition Brotherus takes up a position in space that is always relative to the surroundings and the landscape, but also to art history. The dialogue with these paintings or the texts made by deceased artists becomes visible. The pictures are events, but at the same time they are spaces in which a friendship is enacted. Through them the connection to someone else who is personally important is made real. “Artists need other artists. We have teachers from our student days, and later on self-chosen ones, to offer us a helping hand. Connections, chains, affinities and friendships are important. They are places where art is thought about and enthused about.”

Four works from the ‘Visitor (Villa Didrichsen)’ series of photographs that Brotherus shot at the Didrichsen Art Museum in 2021–2022 are being shown as part of the Helsinki Contemporary exhibition. The starting point for these images was the freedom to work with an entire art collection, while making use of the building’s architecture and interiors. With their presence, the figures in the pictures – the visitors – bring the space to life, suggesting alternative realities alongside the actual history of this building designed by Viljo Revell (1958, 1964). At Didrichsen, Brotherus, who is known as a colourist, got to act as curator of her own pictures. She was able to pick out paintings from the Museum’s collections, for instance, to match the colours of her compositions.