The exhibition Punainen presents the latest production as well as previous works from the 2000s and 2010s of Mervi Kytösalmi-Buhl, a pioneer of Finnish video and performance art. The exhibition’s object assemblages, textile works and installations playfully raise sensitive and difficult issues such as loss and grief. The central theme of the exhibition is concern about the rapid change in natural and residential environments. The works, with their animal motifs and winter worlds, allude to changing ecological conditions and the effects that technological development has on human lifestyles. The exhibition reminds us of the importance of cherishing the present moment and the transience of time in its inexorable passage.
Kytösalmi-Buhl often makes her works from ready-made objects, such as old household goods or materials that have become unnecessary. She also uses materials she finds in nature, as well as wood and textiles. Many of the works are made using handicraft methods, from sewing to crocheting and embroidery. They speak of her appreciation for the art of making by hand, which is passed down from generation to generation – Kytösalmi inherited her own fascination with fabrics and yarns from her grandmother.
Kytösalmi-Buhl, who moved from Imatra to West Germany in the 1970s, trained as an artist at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts as a master’s student under sculptor and performance artist Klaus Rinke. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf was a vibrant center of experimental art, where many internationally renowned artists served as teachers. It was also one of the first video art schools in Europe. Video art was taught by Fluxus artist Nam June Paik, with whom Kytösalmi-Buhl also collaborated.
Kytösalmi-Buhl created videos and performances in the male art scene of Düsseldorf at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s that explore body movement, time and space, as well as femininity and ideals of beauty. The exhibition Punainen presents another side of Kytösalmi-Buhl’s work, the aesthetics of ready-made objects and materials, which often move on the boundaries between the beautiful and the obnoxious, the imaginary and the realistic. The exhibition is part of the Linnamo Prize, which the Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation and the Forum Box cooperative awarded to Kytösalmi-Buhl in 2023. Awarding the price recognises Kytösalmi-Buhl’s significant, individual artistic practice that has paved its own path in the field of Finnish art.
Mervi Kytösalmi-Buhl (b.1948 Imatra) is an artist living in Cologne and Ruokolahti, whose work includes photography, object assemblages, drawings, textile works and installations. Kytösalmi-Buhl, who graduated from the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts in 1981, is also one of the pioneers of Finnish video and performance art. Her works have been exhibited in Finland and at video festivals and group exhibitions in Europe and the United States.