Works by Hreinn Fridfinnsson, Anne Koskinen and Elina Merenmies are on view at Nordiska Akvarellmuseet (the Nordic Watercolour Museum) in Skärhamn, Sweden, from 22 September 2019 to 5 January 2020. The What is Growing exhibition presents works from the museum’s collection by artists who have been inspired by nature’s rich flora.
Image: Elina Merenmies, Hands, 2004, ink on paper, 19 x 23 cm
Anne Koskinen will present the She/He/They exhibition and talk about her artistic practise on Sunday 15 December at 2pm. Please notice that the event will be in Finnish. Welcome!
Art section of The Finnish Critics’ Association organizes a discussion about texts in the exhibition space at Galerie Anhava on Friday 22 November at 4pm. What kind of texts are there in exhibitions? To whom are these texts written and who writes them? What is the meaning of text in the exhibition space?
The participants of the panel discussion are the curator of the Pro Artibus Foundation PhD Juha-Heikki Tihinen, artist Anna Estarriola and the Senior Planning Officer from the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma Sanna Hirvonen. The discussion will be moderated by Sanna Lipponen from EDIT media.
The discussion will be held in Finnish and English.
Welcome!
Join us on Sunday 17 November at 2pm for the Gallery Talks event. Anna Estarriola will give a talk about her work and the Hideouts exhibition at the gallery. Please notice that the event will be in English. Warmly welcome!
The Finnish State Art Commission organised an art competition inviting five Finnish artists and one artist duo to give proposals for works of art to be placed in the new building of the Finnish-Russian School in Helsinki. Heini Aho’s proposal Meditatiivinen kello (Meditative Clock) was selected as the winner of the competition.
The artwork explores and expands the traditional idea of time and its essence in a poetic manner. In addition, Aho’s delicate kinetic work is both thematically and pedagogically suitable to the school environment.
The project will be finished in 2020–2021.
Heini Aho and Santeri Tuori take part in the When is now? exhibition at WAM, the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art in Turku. The exhibition explores the concept of time, how time is experienced and manifested, featuring works by 14 artists.
When is now? opens on 11 October 2019 and is on view until 19 January 2020.
Image: Heini Aho, Day Inside, 2013/2019, photo Ville Mäkilä
The artist duo Grönlund-Nisunen showcases two installations as part of the Rijeka 2020 European Capital of Culture project, organised by the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka, Croatia. The installations Time Slip and Imminence have been created in collaboration with Croatian artist Ivana Franke, and will open to the public on 11 October 2019.
Situated underneath the Titov Trg, the site-specific light installation Time Slip examines the topics of water, memory, and continuity of time, modifying the stream of the Rjecina river. Imminence, exploring the elements of water, light and sound, is on view on the ground floor of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.
Imminence is open until March 2020 and Time Slip will be on view throughout 2020.
Jani Ruscica’s new public video art work, Hope is the thing with feathers, commissioned by HAM Helsinki Art Museum for the Central Library Oodi will be unveiled on Saturday 5 October 2019. The work focuses on four bird species – a coal tit, song thrush, hazel grouse and common teal – on their visit to Oodi. The animated birds move around the architectural interior of the library and offer an alternative experience of the space. The featured bird species are known to have nested in the Töölönlahti area, but have moved a few kilometres further north.
The work comprises nine short videos that pop up on the library’s information displays between notifications and event information. The delicate soundscape of the work consists of song and sounds of the birds. The name of the piece originates from Emily Dickinson’s poem from 1862 and this choice of name refers to the cultural content of the library and also examines how language resonates in time, even across hundreds of years.
Jani Ruscica’s artist talk will be held at the Oodi library at noon on Saturday 5 October. Ruscica will discuss his new public work of art and his solo exhibition Human Flesh with Hanna Huitu, Director of Galerie Anhava, and Kristiina Ljokkoi, Curator of Public Art at HAM Helsinki Art Museum. The Human Flesh exhibition will be on view at Galerie Anhava 3–27 October. The artist talk is arranged in association with HAM Helsinki Art Museum and the Central Library Oodi. Please notice that the discussion will be in Finnish. Welcome!
Works by Kari Cavén, Matti Kujasalo and Anna Tuori are on view at the Busan Museum of Art in South-Korea from 12 June to 17 November 2019. The Finnish Aalto exhibition presents Finnish design and contemporary art. The contemporary art section features works by 11 prominent Finnish contemporary artists, ranging from paintings, photographs and media art to installations and crafts.
Image: Anna Tuori, Me, Myself and I, 2012, oil on board, 120 x 130 cm
Noora Schroderus will discuss her artistic practice and current solo exhibition DIY at the gallery on Sunday 29 September at 2pm. Please notice that the event will be in Finnish. Welcome!
As part of the current Helene Schjerfbeck exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Academy has invited Karoliina Hellberg to collaborate on the RA Editions programme. Hellberg’s limited edition print Lökar (Onions) was specially commissioned by the RA Editions, and is available at the Royal Academy of Arts and Galerie Anhava. A selection of references to Schjerbeck’s works which Hellberg finds most personally meaningful can be found throughout the composition:
“Schjerfbeck had a way of making versions of her own work and of others. I do that too in my own way, pictures inside pictures, for example an older work on paper might be found as a picture in a bigger interior painting. It felt natural to use this method to make references and versions of her works inside this interior as she was using methods of ’reworking’ and ‘repetition’ as well.” – Karoliina Hellberg
Lökar (Onions), 2019, limited edition of 25 Silk-screen prints on 330gsm Somerset Velvet mould-made cotton rag paper with hand-finished edges, 42 x 29.7 cm, each print is hand-numbered and in a portfolio.
The Art is Life exhibition by Swedish artist Jacob Dahlgren is on view at Copenhagen Contemporary from 25 August 2019 to 1 June 2020. The exhibition showcases large-scale sculptural installations. Visitors are invited to become co-creators of the artworks and take active part in the art experience.
Observing everyday life is at the core of Dahlgren’s artistic practice. He finds the material for the artworks from DIY stores, supermarkets, or ironmonger shops – and turns them into colourful geometric and abstract artworks.
Photo: Copenhagen Contemporary/Anders Sune Berg
Welcome to the Gallery Talks event on Saturday 31 August. Elina Merenmies and Hanna Saarikoski will both present their current solo exhibitions and talk about artistic practice. The event will be in Finnish.
2pm, Elina Merenmies, Bourgeons & Cracks
2.30pm, Anhava Underground: Hanna Saarikoski
Image: Hanna Saarikoski, C, 2019
The Mänttä Art Festival 2019 features an installation by Heli Hiltunen and Jorma Puranen. The artwork is based on photographs of Werner Holmberg’s classic landscape paintings: “Combining the faded photographs, metallic serigraphy surfaces and old engravings, Hiltunen and Puranen take the viewer to some unusual and menacing scenes.”
More than 50 artists exhibit their works in the largest summer exhibition of Finnish contemporary art, curated by Marja Helander.
The festival in Mänttä-Vilppula, Finland, is open from 16 June until 1 September 2019.
The Together but Apart exhibition at Ryan Lee Gallery presents new works by Norwegian artist Anne-Karin Furunes. The exhibition includes a selection of portraits, landscapes, and monumental paintings which Furunes has created with her signature technique: she perforates a painted canvas with thousands of holes.
The exhibition calls attention to the urgent threat of climate change and to the mistreatment of the indigenous inhabitants of Fennoscandia, the Sámi people. The Sámi are facing the threat of climate change after living harmoniously in the Arctic for centuries.
Together but Apart is on view at Ryan Lee Gallery in New York from 19 June to 9 August 2019.
A K Dolven is one of Norway’s most well-known contemporary artists with an extensive international career. Her current exhibition, titled hitting a mountain with snow on my right and left shoulder, is on view at Trondheim Kunstmuseum / TKM Gråmølna from 15 June to 15 September 2019. The exhibition consists of paintings, photographies, video and sound installations, including four new works. Dolven takes up general human themes in her artistic practice. In her works the viewer will often be faced with a raw simplicity, but can also see traces of the work process.
OpenART is Scandinavia’s largest biennial for contemporary art. In 2019 OpenART focuses on the Nordic countries of Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Heini Aho, Jacob Dahlgren and Jani Ruscica participate in OpenART among 60 artists, representing 19 different nationalities. The biennial takes place in Örebro, Sweden, from 8 June to 1 September 2019.
Image: Jani Ruscica, Flatlands, 2018
Antti Laitinen has been invited by the European Space for Sculpture association to exhibit his works in Brussels in summer 2019. The exhibition is a part of the cultural programme of Finland’s presidency of the Council of the EU.Laitinen’s exhibition, Fused with Nature, in Tournay-Solvay Park includes two site-specific artworks and a video installation, and is open from 4 July to 29 September. In addition, Laitinen’s photography and video works are on view at La Patinoire Royale/Galerie Valérie Bach on 6–27 July.
Karoliina Hellberg will discuss her artistic practice and current solo exhibition Knot at the gallery on Thursday 27 June 2019 at 3 pm. Please notice that the event will be in Finnish. Welcome!
Early One Morning, Eternity Sculpture by Swedish artist Jacob Dahlgren brings colour and playfulness to the Kalasatama residential district in Helsinki. The pink steel sculpture is located at Capellanaukio in Kalasatama and is unveiled on Helsinki Day 12 June 2019.
Dahlgren wants to create urban spaces that provide an opportunity for relaxation and play. “Its appearance changes depending on which direction you look at it from. It is like a phrase written in longhand and in a completely new language,” he describes.
Photo: HAM/Maija Toivanen
MOMENTUM, The Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art, celebrates its 10th edition with a program that presents 29 international artists. It also rediscovers iconic works of art that have been shown in previous editions. Salla Tykkä participates in the biennial with her work Victoria (2008).
“From the late summer until the end of the year 2007, I observed the giant water lily during the nights in the botanical garden in Helsinki. I wanted to see how this photosensitive plant would open its tight bulb in the darkness—but I never witnessed this happening. The bulb remained closed the night of filming and in the morning, after turning the lights off and switching off cameras, it had opened alone. In the film, one sees only the closing of the flower played in reverse.”
– Salla Tykkä
MOMENTUM10: The Emotional Exhibition is on view at the Momentum Kunsthall and Galleri F 15 in Moss, Norway, from 8 June to 9 October 2019.
Kari Vehosalo and Antti Laitinen take part in Mostly Happy – Finnish Art Today group show at Haus am Lützowplatz in Berlin. The show, curated by Marc Wellmann, presents ten artists who allow an insight into the diversity and the quality of Finnish contemporary art. On one hand, their works are connected to the codes and discourses of the global art world. On the other hand, one can identifiy country-specific references to the history, society and most of all to the nature of the country.
The exhibition opens on 7 June and will be on view until 11 August 2019.
Image: Kari Vehosalo, Wanderers IV, 2019.
Vesa-Pekka Rannikko’s exhibition Limbo at Photographic Gallery Hippolyte opened on Friday 31 May.
Vesa-Pekka Rannikko’s two artworks at the Photographic Gallery Hippolyte are based on intermediate states of uncertainty, isolation, and endless expectations. Both the video installation Limbo, built in the gallery space, and the animated drawing Multi-faith Prayer Room, projected on the gallery wall, are associative, party-personal peregrinations—mixing artificial structures of culture with nature-related imagery. The works outline the boundary that emerges when a constructed fictional reality meets an aspiration for an authentic experience.
The exhibition is on view until 28 June.
Antti Laitinen and Jacob Dahlgren take part in the group show Continuous Refle(a)ction at Riverside Art Museum in Beijing. The exhibition concentrates on environmental sustainability and includes collaborations between 34 artists from 18 countries.
The exhibition opens on Saturday 25 May and is on view until 28 August 2019.
Päivikki Alaräihä will discuss her artistic practice and current solo exhibition May at the gallery on Saturday 18 May 2019 at 2 pm. Please notice that the event will be in Finnish. Welcome!
Antti Laitinen takes part in the group show The Storm Station at Lusto – The Finnish Forest Museum in Punkaharju, Finland. The exhibition opened on 26 April 2019 and is on view until 12 January 2020.
“The Storm Station is an interpretation of storms and related experiences through different art forms, science and cultural research. The works in the Storm Station project highlight features such as the history and interpretation of storms from folklore to the present day, the birth of storms, and people’s experiences and memories of storms.”
Image: The Storm Station, Antti Laitinen © Timo Kilpeläinen.
Hanna Huitu, 41, Master of Political Sciences and Master of Fine Arts, has been appointed CEO of Galerie Anhava. She has worked at Galerie Anhava since 2003 as a coordinator and assistant director and has served in various expert capacities in the arts.
During the past three years, Hanna Huitu has worked alongside Ilona Anhava, the founder of Galerie Anhava and its previous CEO, in planning the programme and strategy of the gallery, being responsible for contacts with artists, financial administration and international art-fair and development projects.
“My new role as CEO feels inspiring and challenging at the same time. A solid and interesting programme of exhibitions is, of course, at the core of our activities. Alongside it, our main tasks consist of international projects, serving artists and clientele and the marketing of art. As CEO, I also want to work to help new audiences and generations of art collectors discover Galerie Anhava and our fine artists”, Huitu describes her aims.
Ilona Anhava, who founded the gallery in 1991, is retiring and moving on from her position as CEO to serve in an advisory capacity. Anhava will still be on the board of the gallery and serve as its senior advisor.
“I have worked with Hanna for well over a decade and I’ve come to know her not only as someone who is widely read, but also as a highly reliable and conscientious person with intuition. We hold similar views of the values of the gallery, its procedures and mission and the future that we want it to have. Furthermore, Hanna may also be slightly more diplomatic than me, which might not necessarily be a disadvantage. I am very grateful that she has chosen to accept this challenge”, says Anhava.
Galerie Anhava is delighted to announce the representation of Finnish artist Jussi Niva (born 1966 in Pello).
The spatial experience of Jussi Niva’s painting cannot be fixed to any single cognitive or experiential point. Instead, the works are loaded with elements that lead to fracture, such as acute angles where the surface of the painting takes a surprising turn.
“I am currently painting two-dimensional surfaces and three-dimensional objects in parallel, because I want to detach the experience of three-dimensionality from the ‘modelled form’ and link it instead to the surface of the painting. The three-dimensional works are interventions of sorts, they thrust into the space but conversely they also project space.”
Jussi Niva graduated from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 1989. In recent years, he has participated in various exhibitions, including “Offspace, Zsófi Barabás – Jussi Niva”, Gallery Faur Zsófi in Budapest (2018); “Ich bin ein Riss, ich will durch Wände gehen”, Salon Dahlmann in Berlin (2018); “Two-Way Ahead, Jussi Niva – Juri Markkula”, Hanaholmen Gallery in Espoo (2018); “Killing Me Softly, Works from the Miettinen Collection”, Salon Dahlmann in Berlin (2018); “Imaginary Meeting”, Rovaniemi Art Museum Korundi in Rovaniemi (2018) and “Dreamaholic – Art from Finland”, Miettinen Collection, Weseburg Museum of Modern Art in Bremen (2017).
In 2009, Niva was awarded the William Thuring Prize. His works are included in Finnish and Swedish public collections, among others, the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, the Saastamoinen Foundation, the Finnish State Art Collection, Malmö Art Museum and the Swedish National Public Art Council, as well as in numerous private collections in Finland and abroad.
Jussi Niva’s solo exhibition will be held in Galerie Anhava in January 2020.
Galerie Anhava is pleased to present its new website.
We aimed for a fresh look and easy navigation to artist profiles, exhibitions, news and art fairs – and that is what Tsto designed for us. Thank you!
The renewal process of our website has been supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture.
Kari Vehosalo takes part in the group show Fragile at Hyvinkää Art Museum. The exhibition, compiled by Mika Karhu, presents paintings, sculpture, and drawings from 13 artists. The works displayed in the Fragile exhibition present the vulnerability of our social life and life in general.
The exhibition opened on 15 March 2019 and is on view until 12 May 2019.
Antti Laitinen takes part in the group show Na Na Land – It’s My World at Savina Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul. The exhibition is curated by Lucida Kyungmin Lee.
The exhibition opened on 14 March 2019 and is on view until 7 July 2019.
A K Dolven takes part in the Quebec City Biennial: Small Between the Stars, Large Against the Sky. A K Dolven’s work titled her voice 1599-1672 is installed in an entrance of the Édifice Marie-Guyart.
The biennial is curated by Jonathan Watkins. It opened on 16 February and is on view until 21 April 2019.
Anne Koskinen’s commissioned portrait of CEO Timo Viherkenttä Revelation – Timo Viherkenttä was revealed at The Finnish Cultural Foundation in Helsinki on 11 February 2019.
Koskinen’s Revelation portrait series is a nod toward traditions of artistic manifestos, as each piece moves through past, present, and future moments by containing emerging elements. In Viherkenttä’s portrait Koskinen employed old painting techniques and painted with gold and silver, which empahasize the effect of light and shadow. In this portrait there is also a hidden message that will reveal itself in time.
The portrait was commissioned by The Finnish Cultural Foundation of which Timo Viherkenttä was the chairman of the board from 2012 to 2014.
Salla Tykkä’s extensive solo exhibition at Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art in Turku presents photography and video art works of Salla Tykkä from the 1990’s to present day.
The pervasive themes of the display are gaze, power and gender. Who is looking and how? Who is the object of the gaze? In her earliest works, Tykkä has dealt with the gendered gaze, whereas in her recent works, she has reflected on the Western and colonialist gaze and its problematic nature.
Tykkä’s most recent work Untitled (White – Alps) shifts the perspective from the personal to a broader perspective, to cultural meanings related to landscapes and culture-specific concepts of the universe. The travelogue, shot on analogue film, moves along with the currents of air in a hot air balloon with a view over the Alps, bathing in the light of the dawn.
The exhibition opened on 8 February 2019 and will be on view until 19 May 2019.
Jacob Dahlgren and Antti Laitinen take part in HEIMAT The 2018 Guang’an Art Biennale in China. The exhibition area is located out in the open and includes exhibits at the Baozhen, a traditional residential complex, Duanjia Yard and its surrounding pools.
In his installation Grid Garden, Antti Laitinen plays with the elements of two and three-dimensionality. Branches gathered from the local environment are curved and attached to metal netting, forced on a two-dimensional surface. The sheets of branches form a multi-layered, silhouette-like thicket of branches.
Jacob Dahlgren exhibits an interactive installation titled The Wonderful World of Abstraction. Stepping in to the cylinder-shaped structure filled with a sea of multicoloured satin strips causes a sense of loosing one’s direction.
The biennale opened on 16 December 2018 and is on view until 10 May 2019.
Heini Aho has been selected as one of the artists to create a public art work in Turku University Hospital. Aho’s artwork titled Treehouse is an aerial three-dimensional sculpture in which the doors and windows function as projection surfaces for videos.
The artwork will create a changing view in the great lobby of the Turku University Hospital and will be installed in 2021. It is commissioned from Aho by the The Hospital District of Southwest Finland.
Karoliina Hellberg is Didrichsen Art Museum’s 2019 Pro Arte artist. The Didrichsen Pro Arte award is issued every few years to a young, promising artist. Hellberg´s award includes a stipend, an exhibition at Didrichsen Art Museum, a publication and the acquisition of a painting to the museum’s collection.
Works on paper and canvas are at the centre of Hellberg’s production. Works completed in other techniques often emerge from ideas and figures born during the painting process. Memories, secrets and personal experiences have their own visual interpretations in Hellberg’s imagery. Hellberg builds her exhibitions in an installation form. Together with the exhibition space and its atmosphere, the works on paper and canvas as well as the glass objects create a unity.
The exhibition opened on 25 January 2019 and will be on view until 5 May 2019.