Heino has always dealt with his own life and relationships in his works. The sculptures in the citrus series include symbolic references to imprints left by people and memories. The titles of the works are telling. Many came from songs that he listened to during the breakup process: Fraud, Victim, Can I Just Once Dance Like You Do, If There’s No Other Way… Heino says that the exhibition name, There’s Always One Banana, refers to how the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Although these poetic works are very personal, Heino leaves plenty of room for viewers’ interpretations.
Heino’s sculptures have always conveyed conventional values of beauty, albeit with a touch that is fitting for contemporary sculpture. He has abandoned the traditional, internal rules of sculpture. Heino’s sculptures have been characterised by playfulness – a certain mixture of style. He has had little reverence for the preconceptions that exist about styles, themes, materials, techniques and the titles of works. He has mixed styles and even the subjects of his sculptures have pushed back the boundaries. He has treated traditional materials for sculpture, marble and stone, in new and innovative ways.
Heino has painted over the marble on some of the works in the citrus series and rubbed down the painted surface, making it translucent, on some. In the aluminium sculptures, one side is left rough and exposed after casting, and the other side is shiny having been painted with a high-gloss candy car paint. The natural is combined with the industrial, and the material’s inner life disappears – or is given a new life.
The works in the citrus series are sculptural illusions in which stone, marble or cast aluminium are, in the tradition of sculpture, like meat worked by the artist – and metaphors for the mind. They are condensed visual counterparts of emotions as well as objects that are pleasing to the eye.
Rauli Heino
Sculptor Aaron Heino (b. 1977) graduated from Lahti Institute of Design and Fine Arts in 2002. He won the Fine Arts Academy of Finland’s award in 2019, which was accompanied by an extensive exhibition at EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art in autumn 2021.
