KRISTIINA MÄENPÄÄ – FRACTURE
The works of Kristiina Mäenpää observe the relationship between two- and three-dimensional space. Murtuma is a space-related installation work that extends towards the interfaces and intermediate spaces of opposites.
At the heart of the work is the dialogue between construction and decay, and the material and the intangible. With its material essence, the installation occupies the whole space but its core is found in the absence and emptiness between the materialities. The elements of the work settle into place as defined by a random breakdown that took place in the work process.
Kristiina Mäenpää (b. 1990) is a visual artist working in Helsinki. The exhibition is part of her Master’s thesis at the Academy of Fine Arts of the Helsinki University of the Arts. The exhibition is funded by the Arts Promotion Centre and VISEK.
HANNA RÅST – PERFECT VIEWS
The works in the exhibition are destroyed, broken, censored or missing something essential. These concrete manifestations of decay function as a guideline for the production and interpretation of the works. What do we see when we look at the cracks on an artwork? The disintegration and dismantling of works allows for an intermediate stage from which new variations and ideas can emerge. Is the work really ever finished?
Perfect Views is a collection of incomplete and broken views. They can be interpreted as coincidences, delusions, and mistakes we encounter in our everyday observations, experiences, and attempts to remember. These errors are an essential part of my artistic work, where, for example, dissatisfaction with the outcome of the process or the breakage of a work can lead to something new. These coincidences are a kind of questioners: what does the work want to say through its disintegration? I am inspired by this unsteady way of doing things. The processes of making works are like explorations, in which notes, photographs, and drawings go constantly missing, they decay or fade, and in which meanings are constantly changing their form through variation and interpretation.
Hanna Råst is a Helsinki-based visual artist. In her works, something is often hidden, omitted, or only partially displayed. The works are fragments that Råst makes using various materials. As her main themes, she often deals with the fragility of memory, layered time, and everyday events that pass by unnoticed.
Archival material and photography serve as starting points in Råst’s works. There is always something absent, misinterpreted, and fragmented – just like the limits of our own memories, comprehension, and perception. This absence supports Råst’s idea of archival material as a trail that leaves much room for interpretation when detached from its original context. The wear and tear of old objects refers to lived life, but also to change. Traces are clues, discoveries, or memories – pieces that do not form a complete image, but a map where emptiness and spaces between play a major role.
The exhibition is supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland
MAIJA BLÅFIELD – THE FANTASTIC
The Fantastic is a film about encountering the unknown and the relationship between imagination and reality. The film is built on interviews with exiled North Koreans, who describe what they imagined the outside world to be like, based on their experiences of watching smuggled western fiction films.
The Fantastic reverses the set-up where westerners are peeping in on the everyday life of the closed-off state. In this film, it is the North Koreans who direct their curiosity at the outside world. How the version of our world presented in the movies is seen, when it is observed without information on its background? Combining documentary footage and visual effects, the film raises the question of how reality is defined and what we wish to believe in.
The film was shot on location in North Korea and its borders with China and South Korea. In addition to documentary footage the film includes visual effects.
The film has been screened and awarded at numerous film festivals. It is also nominated for Best Short Film at the Finnish Film Awards (Jussi Awards). The film is on view for the first time as installation in Forum Box.
You can watch The Fantastic on Yle Areena.
Maija Blåfield is a Helsinki-based artist, whose works deal with the ambiguity of reality, the various ways of experiencing our everyday life and the relationship between humans and our environment. Her works have a creative documentary perspective with strong narrativity and subtle humour. Along with the exhibitions of contemporary art, her films are often shown at film festivals, on television and online. She was awarded the Finnish State Prize for Media Arts in 2014 and nominated for the Ars Fennica Award in 2017.
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