As an entirely new feature in Riska’s art, many of her recent sculptures are propped on struts, some resembling Japanese wooden geta sandals, others rounder like wheels or pompoms. By resting her sculptures on inbuilt pedestals, Riska has freed up wholly new avenues of expression in her construction of form. Each sculpture tells its own mini-story, and the titles hint at the underlying meanings in subtle, oblique ways. Instead of having a clear uniting theme, the sculptures in this exhibition were created intuitively, in states of mind ranging from joy to sorrow. They are richly diverse in style, yet each one has a counterpart or companion piece with which it engages in dialogue, creating cohesion within the exhibition.
Working with clay is just as inspiring to Riska today as it was forty years ago. She describes it as a huge privilege and gift. At the heart of her process is her desire to distill her craft to its purest essence – to strip everything down to the essentials and achieve total integrity of expression. While immersed in a project, she avoids looking at the work of other artists and strives to concentrate purely on her own creative process.
Kristina Riska (b. 1960) is one of Finland’s most internationally renowned ceramic artists. Her studio is based on the premises of the Arabia Art Department Society in Helsinki. She has won international awards and has exhibited her work everywhere, from the United States to Denmark and Japan. Her sculptures are held in numerous international private collections, as well as the collections of the Saastamoinen Foundation and the Finnish and Swedish governments.
