Villu Jaanisoo, Jussi Niva
Wave / Diffus
Gallery Kalhama & Piippo Contemporary, Helsinki
11 January - 10 February, 2008
Gallery Kalhama & Piippo Contemporary opens its first exhibition season with a dialogue between the solo exhibitions of Estonian sculptor Villu Jaanisoo (b. 1963) and Finnish painter Jussi Niva (b. 1966).
VILLU JAANISOO
Villu Jaanisoo has demonstrated exceptional sense of materials and skill for opening up the traditional borders of sculpture in his oeuvre. Jaanisoo is the original exception of Estonian sculpture, who is known internationally as well as in Finland for his unprejudiced use of mundane materials. The original meaning and form of materials is broken in his hands. The process results in spatial installations and environmental art that challenge their own sculpture-ness, location and aesthetics. This allows Jaanisoo to cast a critical eye also on the contexts of exhibiting art and the social evaluation of art. Jaanisoo’s works play with surprising ideas and the transparency of meaning. Large, three-dimensional, unforeseen “objects” of things create a tension between the current place of installation and the symbolic meanings connected with the original material.
Villu Jaanisoo builds a massive sound installation titled Wave (2008) for his first exhibition in Kalhama & Piippo. This work challenges the dimensions of both physical and mental space and thinking. It consists of sound and loudspeakers of various sizes, and is a free continuation to his earlier work Human Talk (2006).
Villu Jaanisoo has attracted ample attention with his environmental sculptures carried out in Finland. Next summer he will realise his work Everything Is Possible in the Viikki campus of the University of Helsinki. Villu Jaanisoo graduated from the Department of Sculpture of the Estonian Academy of Arts in 1989 and lives and works in Pirkkala, Finland. He acts as the Professor of Sculpture in the Estonian Academy of Arts.
JUSSI NIVA
Jussi Niva’s first solo exhibition in Kalhama & Piippo opens up yet another viewpoint to the artist’s recent expedition of the concepts of time and space. In his earlier works Twist and Fine Tuning Jussi Niva explored questions about time, duration and movement. Now in his new Diffus works Jussi Niva concentrates on the making up and braking down of a situation. At the same time, in an intriguing way, he moves more ambivalently in the middle ground between figurative and abstract: The subject of a painting is an extract of any earlier seen surroundings – a wall of a building, a glass surface or a view gliding past. The subject basis moves aside, however, as it disintegrates and spreads out as an abstract surface of paint. The subtly visible brush strokes catch the eye and function as a mark of the act of painting and the human imprint. The painting in itself is a kind of a performative event, and the work draws its existence from “following” that act. When the artist discusses his recent paintings, he refers to a kaleidoscopic reality that his avoidance of the frontal perspective and playing with the forms of the works intensify.
Jussi Niva graduated from the school of the Finnish Fine Arts Academy in 1988 and he represented Finland in the Venice Biennale in 1993. Jussi Niva lives and works in Helsinki and he acts as a lecturer of Painting in the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. Jussi Niva’s paintings are currently shown in the Carnegie Art Award exhibition touring the Nordic countries
GALLERY KALHAMA & PIIPO CONTEMPORARY
Mannerheimintie 3B, 00100 Helsinki
www.kalhamapiippo.com
