Group Exhibition
Valon voimaa // Remain in Light
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Helsinki Contemporary ends its spring season with a collective exhibition curated by Mika Hannula: Valon voimaa // Remain in Light. This brings together major figures from different generations in contemporary painting, who each represent a different approach to painting. This cohort of artists are offering viewers new works produced specifically for the exhibition.
The exhibition focuses on a key aspect of the artistic working process: hope – the hope of finding a way to continue, of keeping moving, of doing and acting. What is the power and the light that makes you carry on working and seeking a way forwards? Where do you find the light necessary for the working process – the symbol of hope and continuity?
The second part of the exhibition title is a direct quotation from the 1980 Talking Heads album Remain in Light. This record produced by Brian Eno symbolizes the way that the heat and the movement of things can be combined so as to keep it all together and generate a flow, impetus and warmth.
Birgir Snæbjörn Birgisson (b. 1966) is an Icelandic artist who graduated at the start of the 1990s, having studied art in Reykjavík and Strasbourg. Blondes have been a recurrent theme for more than a decade. His works investigate depictions of blondes in our cultural environment.
Eeva-Riitta Eerola (b. 1980) studied art in Helsinki and Paris. Her works deal with perception and observation, and investigate how we experience and understand images. She expresses herself in the form of a dialogue between figurative and abstract, landscape and detail.
Jukka Korkeila (b. 1968) is one of Finland’s leading painters, who acquired his education in Helsinki and Berlin. He is known for boldly breaking the boundaries of both pictorial content and painting traditions. In his recent works multilayering and recycling of images and text serve as accentuated elements.
Heidi Lampenius (b. 1977) studied art in Helsinki. Her abstract works draw us into faint memory impressions, in order to trigger recollections or representations of places. When she is working, she tries to obliterate the traces of the painting event from the work, seeking an emptiness that will hold the painting together and create a coherent surface, place or memory. Thus, the focus of the work frequently extends far beyond the canvas.
Anna Retulainen (b. 1969) is classed among Finland’s front-rank artists. In her working process she deals with conventions and perceptions in painting. Retulainen’s paintings consist of details from everyday life, journeys, or masterpieces from art history. For her, drawing is a way of life and a way of creating memory impressions that help the paintings to come into being.
Henry Wuorila-Stenberg (b. 1949) is a key figure in Finnish contemporary art. His works deal with the basic questions of life, death, hope, love and sexuality. Wuorila-Stenberg’s artworks can be divided up into different periods, each of which is associated with a characteristic style and specific subjects. Recently, he has been producing small-scale works on paper.