2023 | Galerie Anhava

31 March 2023

Essi Kuokkanen at Turku Art Museum

Essi Kuokkanen is on view in Turku Art Museum’s newly opened collection exhibition Handle with Care, which explores the museum’s contemporary art collection from the perspective of care and caring. The exhibition brings out how current themes in social discussion and posthumanist thinking, such as environmental relations, interspeciesism, and neospirituality are manifested in visual art, and how art can participate and influence the resolution of the current ecological crisis.

Handle with Care showcases paintings, prints, photographs, moving images, and sculptures by 26 contemporary artists. The exhibition is curated by Selina Kiiskinen, Elli Liippo and Annina Sirén.

Image: Essi Kuokkanen, For You I Will Give My Everything, 2022, oil on canvas, 168 x 140 cm
Photo: Eetu Huhtala

14 March 2023

Mari Sunna on view in Beijing

Works by Mari Sunna are on display as part of the international group exhibition Control group: In a prism-like sight at the CLC Gallery Venture in Beijing, China. The exhibition is curated by Junyao Chen, and it runs until 15 April 2023.

“Like occasional flashes of dreams and spiritual visions during a mechanical social life, the artist manages to evoke familiar everyday moments for the viewer while depicting the personal feelings of modern human oscillating between reality and illusion.” –exhibition text

Image: Courtesy of CLC Gallery Venture

8 March 2023

Marko Vuokola at Kunsthalle Helsinki

Marko Vuokola’s extensive solo exhibition Ocean of Love at Kunsthalle Helsinki opens 11 March. The exhibition focuses mainly on new works presented for the first time, and the methods range from photography to moving image, from objects to drawings, sound and installations. Vuokola is a curious thinker whose condensed and minimal conceptual artworks do not exclude experience or emotions. Individual works are like letters or words that together form sentences and stories – what do a seashell, a green flash, and a glass of water have in common? The exhibition runs until 16 April 2023.

Ocean of Love, installation view. Photo: Patrik Rastenberger / Kunsthalle Helsinki

1 March 2023

Jacob Dahlgren, Matti Kujasalo, Jussi Niva and Mari Sunna at EMMA

Works by Jacob Dahlgren, Matti Kujasalo, Jussi Niva and Mari Sunna are on view as part of Yrjö Kukkapuro – Magic Room exhibition at EMMA Espoo Museum of Modern Art, running until 28 January 2024.

The exhibition marks the occasion of the designer Yrjö Kukkapuro’s 90th birthday, and pairs Kukkapuro’s iconic furniture and prototypes with artworks that similarly play with colours, materials and shapes. The exhibition architecture is based on the Magic Room concept developed by Kukkapuro in the 1980s, which displays furniture in the form of an installation using various structures and lighting effects.

Photo: Paula Virta / EMMA

22 February 2023

Cavén, Guðmundsson, Hautala, Hänninen, Kujasalo, Niva and Vuokola on view in Vaasa

Works by Kari Cavén, Kristján Guðmundsson, Jorma Hautala, Jani Hänninen, Matti Kujasalo, Jussi Niva and Marko Vuokola are on view as part of the Swanljung Collection – Follow Your Heart exhibition at Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art in Vaasa. The exhibition runs through 25 February until 20 August 2023.

Dentist Lars Swanljung (1944–2022) acquired a large collection of contemporary art, which he donated to his hometown Vaasa in 2018. As an art collector, Swanljung was particularly attracted by discreet, minimalistic and conceptual art, but the works in the collection also contain humor, sensitivity and edginess. The Swanljung collection contains more than 900 works by around 400 artists, and focuses mostly on Finnish art.

Image: Jorma Hautala, Autumn Dance, 2010, acrylic on canvas, 160 x 160 cm

10 February 2023

Santeri Tuori at Fotografiska Stockholm

Santeri Tuori takes part in the group exhibition In Bloom at Fotografiska Stockholm from 17 February until 11 June 2023. The exhibition is a symbolic, philosophical and poetic exploration of nature through photography, and provides glimpses of how photographers represent and work with nature today. In Bloom brings together 16 photographers all striving to understand and explore nature and humanity’s relationship to it.

From Tuori, showcased are photographic and video works from his Forest, Sky and Waterfall series. Waterfall #2 (2021), a massive fifteen-metre-wide video projection of falling water from the melting glaciers in Iceland will cover an entire wall in the museum’s exhibition space.

Image: Santeri Tuori, Waterfall #2, 2021, two channel HD video installation, 4 330 x 15 280 cm, 12 min 35 sec. Courtesy of the artist.

1 February 2023

Anne Koskinen and Noora Schroderus at Art Museum Poikilo

Works by Anne Koskinen and Noora Schroderus are on view at Art Museum Poikilo in Kouvola as part of the group exhibition Überhund – the Fascinating Dogs in Art. In autumn 2022 the exhibition, curated by Susanna Luojus, was displayed at the Salo Art Museum. After Poikilo, the exhibition will move on to art museums in Jyväskylä, Mikkeli, and Kuopio.

Überhund puts dogs in the main role and makes them the focus of attention. It tells about the unique bond between us and dogs, and raises questions about dog’s political and ethical aspects. Displayed are works from around 50 artists. The exhibition runs 2 February – 29 April 2023.

Image: Noora Schroderus, Pyry – Long Haired Chihuahua, 2017, dog hair, cotton 76 x 56 cm

30 January 2023

Solo exhibition by Jorma Puranen on view in London

In his solo exhibition They could hear a faraway thunder at Purdy Hicks Gallery in London, Jorma Puranen continues his long-term work re-animating the history and legacy of Arctic explorations. Puranen uses archival sources and different techniques of re-photography, exploring and visualizing relations of past, landscape and culture. The title “They could hear a faraway thunder” comes from a poem of Aqqaluk Lynge, a Greenlandic poet and human rights leader. The exhibition runs 1–28 February 2023.

“In his photographs the found visual material reappears as though from a lost (or future) world, becoming manifest in a ghost form. Through experiences of travel and borderland Puranen wishes to create a matrix of fact and fiction, a field of fantasy and geographical imagination.” –Excerpt from exhibition text

Image: Jorma Puranen, They could hear a faraway thunder 2, 2022, archival pigment print, 182 x 147 cm

24 January 2023

A K Dolven’s new works on display in Oslo

A K Dolven’s solo exhibition Still Life at OSL contemporary in Oslo features some of her most recent works. The exhibition is on view until 25 February 2023.

“Space, temporality, movement, light and sound are all aspects central to A K Dolven’s artistic practice, just as implied or actual human presence is an essential element. In Still Life these key features are distilled in recent artworks using two of the varied range of mediums regularly employed by the artist – painting and lens-based images. While the inherent action is supported on static planes of aluminium or photographic paper, it remains evident. This is life merely stilled.” –Ann Gallagher

Image: A K Dolven, Still Life II, 2022, oil on aluminium, 250 x 125 cm. Photo: Øystein Thorvalden. Courtesy of the artist and OSL contemporary.

18 January 2023

Grönlund–Nisunen on view in Berlin

Grönlund–Nisunen’s exhibition opens at Esther Schipper gallery in Berlin on 20 January and runs through 25 February 2023. The artist duo shares the exhibition space with Ryoji Ikeda and Kaarel Kurismaa.

The new work Scattered Horizon engages visitors in a multi-sensory experience. It presents three swaying lines, which hit the walls of the otherwise dark exhibition space, accompanied by a sound element of three sine wave tones.

“We depend on the stability of our surroundings both physically and psychologically; that is why losing the stabilizing horizon line, and adapting to it, can be experienced either as meditative, thrilling or even uncomfortable, depending on the visitor. Scattered Horizon plays on these associations, but also leaves visitors the freedom to explore their physical presence and emotional response. ” –Excerpt from exhibition text

Image: Grönlund-Nisunen, Scattered Horizon, 2022 (detail), light and sound installation. Courtesy of the artists⁠.

4 January 2023

Tor Arne, Elina Merenmies and Noora Schroderus on view in Rovaniemi

Works by Tor Arne, Elina Merenmies and Noora Schroderus are on view as part of the group exhibition Land of Dusk – Works from the Wihuri Foundation Collection at Rovaniemi Art Museum until 19 March 2023. The exhibition is a dark tale about the finitude as much as bewilderment over how inconceivably entangled life and the planet are. The exhibition halls are built in the spirit of the Renaissance with curiosity cabinets, or chambers, based on various themes. “Land of Dusk is a narrative rather than an exhibition.” Land of Dusk is curated by Rickard Borgström & Rebecca Chentinell / DACE – Dance Art Critical Ecology.

Image:

Tor Arne, Sarjasta Kymmenen maalausta 4, 2001, oil on canvas. Courtesy of Rovaniemi Art Museum