Restlessminds – Objects have feelings too!
At Forum Box Restlessminds will enter the roles of behavioral scientists who conduct research on objects of any kind. Their Sculpture and performance project Objects have feelings too! are stretching the concept of normative personalities, to challenge the human idea about being your true self. “With the interactive experiences in the exhibition we want to help the audience get into to our ideas on: How to look at objects and how it can feel to be an object”. The exhibition is supported by the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland.
We would like to thank the participants in our experiments: Johan Lindström, Eva – Maria Dahlin, Mariana Alves Silva, Magnus Tarras-Wahlberg, Alexandra Wolkowicz, Mirella Pendolin.
Linn Ahlgren for photo and film documentation, and technical equipment from Heaven Concept AB and TransFolk in Loviisa.
Restlessminds are an artist duo consisting of Fabian Olovson and Emily Al-Ghussein. Olovson and Al-Ghussein graduated with Master degrees in fine arts from the Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts. Together they are active on the experimental contemporary art scene and have carried out a number of major art projects in Sweden, Finland, Germany and USA. 2017 they got the “Promising Young artists” award by the Merita Art Foundation. In their projects they have a great desire to experiment with the visitors’ attendance and participation. With their complex identity and confused mindset, they confront current concepts and contemporary perceptions.
Muriel Kuoppala – Portals
In her new body of work, Muriel Kuoppala has tapped deep into her subconscious to produce a series of large-scale paintings, each named Portals. Connecting to the tradition of spiritually motivated art, which informed many of the modernist artists of the early 20th century, themes of spirituality and mysticism shape the exhibition.
Her abstract vocabulary of planetary shapes and swirling bodies of colour embodies infinite possibilities and guide to places that may exist between dimensions. The use of symmetry and organic shapes in her paintings relates to nature as well as the otherworldly realm. The images are not rooted in time but rather depict a moment, a gateway, a portal. As an alternative to composing forms together, the paintings emerge from visions that appear to the artist, emerging from a place deep within, from a void where nothing yet exists but all potential dwells.
Paint is delicately applied to the unprimed canvas, and the technique leaves no room for error. The water has its own life with the paint on the canvas but is guided by the artist. It’s a meditative way of painting for Kuoppala, as the balance of control and letting go is eminent.
Muriel Kuoppala is interested in how the world is put together, its laws, and the bindings.