Rauma Art Museum celebrates Christmas Time in the Lace Town by opening Workshop space in the courtyard for exhibition use on weekends. On display are new works by long-line Rauma artist Sinikka Palonen on two subjects: kisses and cats.
In her art, Sinikka Palonen has dealt with themes inspired by the pictorial world of different spiritual and religious traditions, but Palonen’s works also feature her own mythical symbol world, poetic images of the depressiveness and enigma of human life, images of man’s relationship with nature, life and the universe.
In the latest exhibition, the kisses continues Palonen’s previous series of cuddling and kissing couples. In the images of cats there is something old but also a lot of new. The melancholic female character in the cat works can already be found in Palonen’s works of the 1980s and 1990s, but the cat in these works is a newer subject. The black horned, broadly grimacing cat looks like a ragged-mouthed rattlesnake. The essence of the female character varies from pensive to meditative to sad, profusely tearful. The images are like dreams, like scenes from some unknown mystery play. The characters sitting in symmetrical compositions are compared to allegories of classical art and also to the dream images of surrealism.
Sinikka Palonen (b. 1948) graduated from the Finnish Academy of Arts in 1975 and worked actively as an artist ever since. He was awarded an artist’s pension in 2015.
