The paintings in the exhibition were mainly created during the spring of 2024, and their starting point was photos I found from various sources: for example, sales announcements for used camping equipment picked up from online marketplaces.
The name of the exhibition refers to the experience of inner emptiness, the lack at the center of human experience, and on the other hand to the experience of being in the middle of emptiness. To be inside something, something that produces being inside, but which at the same time is nothing. The figures in my paintings encounter a nocturnal, impenetrable and natural environment. Nature depicted as such means in my paintings the original environment most relevant to an individual’s life. At the same time, paradoxically, motherly security is present, as well as anxiety and fear of being at the mercy of the forces of nature.
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Topi Juntunen (b. 1986) is an artist living and working in Kuopio. He has studied at the Lahti Art Institute and the Academy of Fine Arts (KuM 2021). He mainly works with paintings made using different techniques. His previous solo exhibition was at Galerie Pleiku in Berlin.
