Handprint is an exhibition featuring the artists of the Hyäryllistä collective (Jouko Korkeasaari, Sari Koski-Vähälä and Heli Kurunsaari). It presents three distinct ways of thinking and art-making that merge to form a new collective logic and visual identity. Each artist’s solo projects are presented side by side with their co-created works, the latter being made from handcrafted elements and recycled materials.
Slow, repetitive handcrafting is characteristic of the group’s shared practice. By working together, the perspectives and strengths of the three artists become organically intertwined. Also central to their philosophy is an openness to learning new skills and making discoveries by inviting chance and surprise. The artists make a practice of reusing the materials and components of their earlier works, thus perpetuating the ongoing cycle of materials, forms and meanings that is uniquely characteristic of their work as a collective.
The title of the exhibition refers to the importance of ‘thinking with one’s hands’, but it can also be understood in the broader sense of a handprint or legacy that we leave to future generations and our planet both as individuals and as members of the human race.
Hyäryllistä held its first exhibition in 1992, marking the inception of what is possibly Finland’s longest-running artist collective. The group’s extensive retrospective ‘Kaikkea hyäryllistä’ (Everything Useful) was presented at WAM (Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art) in Turku in 2020. Their other major exhibitions have included ‘Etusormen merkitys nyky-yhteiskunnassa’ (The Importance of the Index Finger in Contemporary Society) at Helsinki’s Galleria Ama in 2020 and ‘Yritys selventää hämmentävää tilannetta’ (An Attempt to Clarify a Confusing Situation) at the Aboa Vetus Ars Nova Takkahuone Gallery in 2017. The group’s work is held in the Wihuri Foundation Art Collection, the City of Turku collection, and the Finnish Museum of Photography. Each member of the collective is also an independent art practitioner whose solo projects overlap with the group’s shared practice. Their first public work, ‘Lentoon’ (Take Wing), was completed for Taivallahti Primary School in Helsinki in 2024.
Jouko Korkeasaari explores genre boundaries through various artistic strategies. In their Muotikummitus (Fashion Spectre) project, they employ art and craft techniques to create upcycled wearable artworks documented through the practices of fashion photography. Many overlapping themes converge in Korkeasaari’s images, from alternative subcultures and contemporary cultural phenomena to gender diversity and queer history.
Sari Koski-Vähälä creates art using her own family’s surplus and rubbish. Through fragile materials collected over a period of many years, her art visualizes and gives a tangible form to the passage of time, the cycle of nature, and the process of slow farewells. The artist herself has contributed to shaping the history of her materials, whereby her art also serves as a critical mirror of contemporary practices and choices.
Heli Kurunsaari works in the medium of woodcut prints. Her work reflects on the human condition and the place of humans in relation to environment and history.
The exhibition is supported by the Arts Promotion Centre, Niilo Helander Foundation, and the Finnish Cultural Foundation/North Ostrobothnia Fund.
Download the list of works here.
Hyäryllistä – Thirty-three Years of Artful Productivity
Juha-Heikki Tihinen, PhD
Hyäryllistä is a three-artist collective formed by Jouko Korkeasaari, Sari Koski-Vähälä and Heli Kurunsaari. The trio held their first exhibition in 1992. What has sustained their motivation all these years? Or perhaps ‘motivation’ is the wrong word, since we are talking about an artistic collaboration and not a corporate incentive scheme. Beyond just collaborating, the group might be described as ‘working together’ in the truest sense of the word, since each of the three artists brings their own special energy to their collective practice.
The group’s name – Hyäryllistä is a southern Ostrobothnian dialectical form of the Finnish word hyödyllistä, meaning ‘useful’ – takes a playful dig at the concept of utility, a controversial notion especially in art. The group has no official founding date, nor does it have a manifesto or programme, choosing instead to follow its own anarchistic logic. Suffice to say that the three artists have together created a body of work that is distinctly different in its approach from their individual artistic paths. Over the decades, the three artists have challenged and refined the logic of their respective solo projects through their long-term collaborative practice, which has proved both successful and highly original.
In her essay Freud’s Toys, the artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) describes the artefacts in Sigmund Freud’s (1856-1939) collection of antiquities are mere “toys”, whereas art represents to her “reality”: “The work of art has an absolute value”. What Bourgeois meant was that she was less interested in Freud’s aesthetic eye than in psychoanalysis and what it could do for artists. Reflecting on the group’s work, I begin to glean a sense of what Bourgeois was getting at. The trio collects assorted recycled materials and transforms them into ‘reality’ – that is, art. Their assemblages of discarded objects invoke not nostalgia, but something tangible yet also elusive at the same time. Their art speaks directly to the unconscious, dredging up a wide spectrum of thoughts and feelings.
The unconscious, being ignorant of time, does not differentiate between past and present, and assigns all phenomena with equal value. The same is true of art, in which disparate elements are freely combined and no individual component is more important than any other. Only the result determines the ultimate meaningfulness of the artwork, and the quality or quantity of its individual components is irrelevant. The viewer should in fact be more interested in an artwork’s experiential impact than its meaning, since ‘meaningfulness’ is a measure of utility, whereas experientiality is pure feeling from which no utilitarian gain can be extracted. Experientiality indeed inherently lies at the very core of what constitutes meaningfulness in art, but this often tends to be marginalized, lest art’s undemocratic power to evoke life-changing experiences be exposed.
The collective has always taken a special interest in the artistic margins. In the 1990s, their collaboration centred on snapshots and performances, after which they founded an artist-run gallery/workspace. Recycling and neo-materialism have since emerged as focal elements in their recent practice. Their new exhibition at Forum Box in February 2025 will feature recycled needlepoint canvases endowed with a sense of temporality through the addition of effects resembling scenery viewed from a train window. The collective will also present a multi-part sculptural installation and smaller, three-dimensional object assemblages. Their latest exhibition shows how each artist’s background as a painter finds expression in the flexible logic of their collaboration, which is rooted in painting traditions and focused on dialogue with the material and the artist’s unique handprint. When working as a group, each of the three artists steps out of their respective comfort zones, surrendering themselves to the uncertainty of exploring the margins, which in turn pushes them towards unknown frontiers. The group’s team engagement celebrates the power of collaboration and affirms that unknown territories are best explored as a collective effort – herein lies both the key lesson and guiding principle of their artistic practice.
Mediabox