Heidi Lampenius
Supernatural

25.11. - 18.12.2016

Helsinki Contemporary’s year ends with Heidi Lampenius’s Supernatural – the artist’s first solo exhibition at the Gallery. Lampenius’s bright, lucent colours will light up the darkening winter evenings at Bulevardi 10 from November 25 to December18.

Familiar themes from Lampenius’s earlier work will be present in the exhibition. Memory images and time, the archaeology of memory, and people’s need to leave their mark and to be seen – and for the individual to belong to a broader continuum. Alternatively the paintings remind us of the isolation of the individual, but also speak of human empathy and of the longing for it.

“Painting is a solitary performance. In this exhibition I have tried to make works so that the paintings are more direct and more human. I have wanted to get away from empty landscapes, spaces and dead standing trees,” Lampenius says.

Lampenius’s working process is physical and holistic: she sprinkles, washes, pours and splashes acrylic paint and ink onto the surfaces of the canvas, and off again. The resultant paintings contain the playful presence of easily recognizable, figurative symbols and the abstract world that surrounds them, a landscape that seems to grow beyond the limits of the painting. The familiar figures let the background live and entice spectators into their worlds, each bringing along their own memories and experiences.

The works in the exhibition combine the figurative with colour, energy and lightness. Lampenius works in series, but grants each painting an independent life: “It is easy to lump paintings together by saying that this is a part of that series. I like to do that myself, too. But they are all individuals, multiple interpretations of the same thing.”

The exhibition’s title evokes plentiful associations. For Lampenius Supernatural is tied up with her own relationship with nature and with time spent in the Finnish archipelago, out at sea and in the forest. Amid nature the mind can wander freely and silently. As though if its own accord, knowing what it is doing without being conscious of it. The title is also linked to the occasionally inexplicable, magical side of artistic work and of the experience of art, which eludes explanation and definition.


Heidi Lampenius (b. 1977) graduated from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2011. She paints in acrylics and ink. Her previous solo exhibitions include Galleria Huuto in 2015 and Sinne in 2014. Her works were last seen at Helsinki Contemporary in the Remain in Light group exhibition in 2015. In spring 2017, Lampenius will be participating in the Sensual Knowledge group exhibition at Landskrona Museum in Sweden. She has also taken part in exhibitions in the other Nordic countries, Italy, Singapore and Taiwan. From January 2017, Lampenius will live and work for three years on an artist’s scholarship in the Pro Artibus Foundation’s Villa Snäcksund.


A special thank you to The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland, Arts Promotion Centre Finland and Kone Foundation for supporting the artist’s work.