Oskari Ruuska ^{Noor kunstnik}

Kunstniku päritolumaa: Soome

Oskari Ruuska (b.1994) is completing his master’s degree at the Academy of Fine Arts of Helsinki in the program of time and space. In addition to his fine art studies, he spent one semester at the Theater Academy of Uniarts Helsinki in the department of Choreography (MA) and completed the Erasmus exchange program at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (Fine arts, BA). Ruuska’s works are situational, sensible, and immersive installations where he examines themes of desire, touch, and (be)longing. Ruuska uses sculptural fragments with other sensible materials such as scents and light together with moving image. For his recent work, he has been building fog machines controlled using an Arduino processor and programming to add a durational element to the work. His graduation work ‘Cruising’ was a vaporous space inspired by saunas and other public sites, where men cruise for sex. Cruising was awarded honors by the Anita Snellman Foundation. At the moment Ruuska is working on the written component of his MFA thesis on poetic and political meanings of queer spaces and places. Pondering about the body as a site of affect, he intends to examine how it is affected by histories and the present and grasping into futurity. In addition to the degree shows of the Academy, his works have been on display in Titanik Gallery in Turku, ACUD Galerie in Berlin, and at the Rietveld Pavilion in Amsterdam.