Jukka Rusanen
Setting

13.01. - 05.02.2017

Jukka Rusanen starts Helsinki Contemporary’s new year with his exhibition Setting, 13.1–5.2.2017. The show brings together paintings and textile collages with an installation that extends across the gallery’s floor. Spatiality lies at the centre of the exhibition, and the artist treats painting, too, as a spatial process.

“Being in the world is spatial, and hence thinking, too, is spatial. The body reacts to the environment and the mind, and this also applies to the artistic working process. A painting is an experience of spatiality and a crystallization of spatiality at the instant it becomes visible.”

The exhibition as a whole consists of various elements that support each other. The crocheted and painted works have equal status in the exhibition. The dialogue between the materials and the relationships between the objects generate an interesting tension in the space. In his works Rusanen has focused attention on the sensory side of the materials. The exhibition’s textile collages contain a lot of silk – often associated with luxury, fragility and the feminine. Paired with silk, the powerful materiality of the paint would have created a harsh contrast, so Rusanen felt it necessary to adopt a thinner layer of paint and a finer line.

A characteristic of Rusanen’s approach is the use of art-historical works as the starting point for paintings. These he then deconstructs and reworks, bringing their themes into the present. More stratified elements have entered his way of painting. Movement and composition are still crucial. On painting in particular, Rubens’ Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, has played a major role in this whole exhibition.

“I have long been fascinated by fleshly compositions in painting. They somehow contain a explicit display of so many human shapes. On the one hand, we see the battle involved in being in the world and, on the other, there is a submission to the gaze and to norms. Desire, disgust, passion, power, submission, ideals. All of this totally acceptable in the form of a painting.”


Jukka Rusanen (b. 1980, Jyväskylä) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Turku School of Fine Arts in 2005 and his Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, in 2007. His recent shows include: Stadtmuseum Ratingen, Ratingen, Germany, 2016; Lachenmann Art, Konstanz, Germany, 2015; and Helsinki Contemporary 2014. Next year, Rusanen will also have solo exhibitions at Galleria Becker, Jyväskylä, Finland, and Lachenmann Art, Konstanz, Germany, and group shows at Stadtgalerie Kiel, Germany, and Hyvinkää Art Museum, Finland. He has just been awarded a 5-year artist’s grant by Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike).

A special thanks to Arts Promotion Centre Finland for supporting the exhibition and to artist Magdalena Jakkila for the help and insights.