In Don’t Mind the RainKari Cavén has stripped an umbrella of its protective canopy and function and attached a thin metal chain around the perimeter. The compact expressiveness of the simple work is a distillation of Cavén’s characteristic humour and philosophical approach and serves as a disarming example of Cavén’s anarchic and laid-back thinking.
Jani Hänninen creates gritty and expressive paintings with interlaced, collagelike layers. Heavenly bodies, satellites, orbits and tyre tracks roll along in black space as if inside a machine. In the sorbet-toned painting hoofs, wild gallops are set free on the green grass.
Elina Merenmies presents paintings in which nocturnal green foliage and the first rays of morning sun reach up towards the heavens. In a fierce gust of wind, wasps swarm towards light, and among the branches, faces emerge from tiny flowers. In her new ink pieces, the artist’s vivid brush conjures up fascinating, enigmatic figures on paper.
Kristiina Mäenpää shows a paired piece consisting of a photograph and a metre-by-metre segment of asphalt. The work investigates temporality, materiality and the interplay between absence and presence. Another piece by Mäenpääexpresses fragility, lightness and transience. Composed of several small pieces of white alginate, the installation hugs the wall, giving it a new identity. One senses an encounter between the weight of the asphalt and the lightness of the alginate.
Noora Schroderus’ ongoing and expanding photo series Artist is a depiction of what it feels like to be an artist or even a human being in this world. The ragdoll of a figure in the pictures is the artist herself, twisting to fit the prevailing pressures of the place, time, will and emotion.
In the works of Anna Tuori, observations and meanings are incontinuous movement, forms alternately appearing and dissolving on the surface of the painting. In Sleepwalking (if the grass is grey green or brown or what), the head of the sleepwalker, who is stepping into a puddle, has detached itself from the body and is floating among books. The figure is holding a lighted candle and a humongous cigarette in its hands, and the air after the rain is fresh and slightly humid.
Two levitating spoons dance feverishly atop a heavy, upright steel rail as if preparing to fly away. In another work, Timo Viialainen has wrapped 500 metres of copper wire around a steel centre, creating a huge electromagnet on the wall that pulls you in like the sun.Viialainen’s works activate the viewer by combining motion, attraction and strong materiality. In addition to the works in the exhibition, Viialainen will also present a performance in the gallery on Sunday, 11 June.
