Helsinki Contemporary is pleased to present at CHART ART FAIR 2021 a group show of work from Ville Andersson, Hannaleena Heiska, Rauha Mäkilä, and Camilla Vuorenmaa.
This constellation of artists will present a variety of media, from photography and drawing to painting and carving on wood. Thematically we will encounter different psychological environments or states of mind and the shared experience of the artists’ generation: identity, relationship to nature, spiritually and the intimacy of everyday life. Visually we move from the figurative towards the abstract, from minimal, detailed drawing to expressive carved and painted wood.
VILLE ANDERSSON often works with the concept of emptiness as a part of visual expression and the possibilities of silence and quietude are central themes in his work. Ville Andersson is a versatile artist, both in his use of different media and in his variety of styles. Characteristic features of Andersson’s aesthetic are allusiveness, richness of nuance, precision, understatement and ephemerality. The soft, organic traces in his pencil drawings and the clear-cut, uniform shapes of the digitally produced images create a strong tension to the artist's body of work.
Ville Andersson: Blaze (2021) Photo: Ville Andersson
HANNALEENA HEISKA’s paintings, drawings, video works and installations create illusions of captured moments, different worlds, and subcultures. She makes her paintings in a single sitting, “alla prima”, striving to achieve brushwork that looks effortless and easy. This gives her paintings the feeling of being a fleeting moment, and a sort of melancholy. Her imagery has been inspired by multiverses, artificial intelligence, the future, and the possibility of life after death. The new works explore timelessness, humanity and signs of utopia, with a starting point in the forerunner of sci-fi, the novel The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish, from 1666.
Hannaleena Heiska: Blazing World (2021) Photo: Jussi Tiainen
RAUHA MÄKILÄ is known for her brightly coloured paintings depicting everyday occurrences, drawing from both popular culture and the artist’s own life and family. Her works, often featuring children, reveal the profound sincerity of their subjects, and an unreserved glorification of the joy of being young. Recently, Mäkilä has reflected on her own position and work as an artist. Her hectic neon world has occasionally shifted towards earthier tones, revealing the more sombre mysticism of youth, the silent strength, and the vacillation between different roles.
Rauha Mäkilä: Nice try 2 (2021) Photo: Jussi Tiainen
In her practice, CAMILLA VUORENMAA challenges the physical and traditional boundaries of painting. Her carved wood paintings are hybrids of sculpture and painting that require time and physical strength to create. The style is rough and unvarnished, endowed with a playful decorativeness, the palette rich and striking. Vuorenmaa depicts people and humanity in her work. She searches for motifs in magazines and books and by taking photographs of her surroundings. In her working process, it has become increasingly important to face fundamental questions by meeting and observing her subjects in authentic situations. In the most recent series of paintings the artist has explored Carrie Fisher’s eventful and tragic life which was entangled with the most famous fictional female action figure, princess Leia.
Camilla Vuorenmaa: Carrie / Leia Organa (2021)Photo: Jussi Tiainen
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