Galerie Anhava

Eeva-Leena Eklund’s art draws its subject matter from everyday events and observations, as well as from personal collections built up over many years. Eklund seeks, selects and organises small, mundane items and objects discarded as kitsch. These are themes that she returns to again and again in her paintings. Her enthusiasm, affection and caring remain untainted by cynicism or calculation and feel fresh, even defiant in this day and age. Eklund’s signature salon-style hanging, consisting of paintings, photographs and objects, is like an unruly yet purposeful string of associations, or like a layered candy cane: you don’t tear into it hungrily with your teeth but instead, take your time to savour it.

Eeva-Leena Eklund (b. 1972, Pori) lives and works in Helsinki. Eklund has exhibited her work in many solo and group exhibitions, including Monitoimitila_O, SIC Gallery, Galleria Sculptor, and the Helsinki, Oulu and Turku Art Museums. Her first solo exhbition at Galerie Anhava took place in 2023. She has work in several major collections, including those of the HAM Helsinki Art Museum, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum and the Finnish State Art Collection. In 2020, Eklund was the first Finnish artist to be invited to create an extensive solo show in the InCollection series by EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art and Saastamoinen Foundation.

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Photo: Courtesy of the artist

“Humans, always oriented toward the future, inevitably confront the reality of their finitude. This tension between infinite aspiration and the limits of life often creates a sense of impatience. For the philosopher Martin Heidegger, the key lies in fully accepting our ephemeral nature, in “being-there” (Dasein) — either by living authentically, embracing our impermanence, or inauthentically, by fleeing from this reality.

For Vehosalo, ‘Being There’ means perceiving reality and truth differently, shaped by our desires, culture, and unconscious mind. In front of vast landscapes and interior scenes marked by gaping black holes, his almost photographic paintings immerse our gaze in mystery, uncertainty, and fragility.”

Image: Kari Vehosalo, The Past is a Gaping Hole III, 2023, oil on copper, 18 x 15 cm. Photo: Erno Enkenberg

The selected works highlight the colour palettes typical of different eras, colour theories, material research, as well as the cultural, symbolic and emotional dimensions of colours. The exhibition brings together paintings, graphic art, photography, moving image and sculpture, all of which illuminate the essence of colour in their own ways.

Alongside the museum’s own acquisitions, works from the collections of Nils Dahlström, the Friends of Turku Art Museum and Lars Göran Johnsson are included, as well as an acquisition from the latest subcollection, Collection Lieto Savings Bank Foundation.

Image: Jussi Niva, I Spy With My Eyes Something Being As Indigo, 1994. Photo: Jussi Tiainen