Camilla Vuorenmaa
Roses, Black Birds and Witches

11.01. - 03.02.2019

Helsinki Contemporary's year starts with two exhibitions, as Ilari Hautamäki and Camilla Vuorenmaa share the gallery space.

Camilla Vuorenmaa’s exhibition Roses, Black Birds and Witches explores superstitions and urban legends. The subjects of the works are witches, vampires and wizards. Vuorenmaa collected background materials in Scotland when she was living there in 2018 and has, for instance, read accounts of the history of witches and of children driven to the verge of mass hysteria. Around this same time, witches were coming up in the media and literature more frequently than before. Vuorenmaa is interested in the need people have to find a common enemy, and via which we seek to protect ourselves against phenomena that we do not understand. She, nevertheless, treats her themes with a certain humour and the aesthetic of her works contains references to 1990s horror films. We are on the boundary between good taste and the macabre.

The characters – fierce, creepy, strange and mischievous – occupy the centre of the paintings. The figures are open to interpretation; we project our own imaginings into the picture and construct a story around it. Another major element in the works is their decorative patterns, which evoke thoughts of tattoos or ancient designs, the inspiration for them found, for example, in old graveyards.

“The series of works Three witches (with overall, shorts, dress) is both a self-portrait and a comment on the famous three monkeys. In the most direct, western interpretation of the Chinese story the monkeys see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. This three-monkeys philosophy, which was previously linked to moral thinking, has often been turned into a satire of itself. We could say that in these works I am examining my own relationship with morals or double standards, and with the preconceptions and fears related to being a woman.”

In her artworks Vuorenmaa combines painting and carving. In the pieces made on wood panels these techniques live in a kind of symbiosis – supporting each other, feeding each other – but also generate a variety of tensions. The carving makes it possible to remove layers, and the marks of the carving can be obliterated by painting over them. In the new works the painting has taken up more space and the carved lines are more concentrated and deliberate. The artworks emerge in a process-like manner and Vuorenmaa works on several pieces simultaneously. The whole thing is constructed naturally, since the works reach completion side by side. The final dialogue between the artworks arises in the gallery space during the hanging.

Read about Ilari Hautamäki's exhibition Indoor Fireworks here, on view at the same time.