Eeva Peura: FLEURS DE MAI
Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki
September 27 – October 20, 2024
In the spring of 2024, EEVA PEURA spent three months at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, where she devoted most of her time to working on paper. The works on paper she produced during her residency might be described not as sketches of the future but more as visual notes on imagined realities, taking inspiration from inner experiences evoked by such things as a color, like red, or a word like papillons (butterflies).
While in Paris, Eeva Peura would often visit the tapestries at the museum of medieval art, where her gaze would trace the silhouettes of the exquisitely woven hawks, horses, flowers and maidens. Observing the tapestries led her to reflect on their makers and the invisible threads connecting them to the viewer, herself. Back at her studio, she would then create her own tapestries and imagined worlds in the soft, painterly medium of crayon.
Working as an artist in residence is an eye-opening experience for Eeva Peura, as it lends her an outsider’s perspective that can lead to the discovery of new ways of seeing as well as insights into the process through which observations and ideas are transformed into artworks. Eeva Peura is intrigued by the way the visible world becomes intermingled with sensations and mental impressions that shape both the art-making process and her artistic identity. Working as a loner and outsider can ideally serve as a positive shake-up, forcing an artist-in-residence to search for wholly new approaches to creating art.
Eeva Peura (b. 1982) graduated as a painting major from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2011. She has presented her work in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Finland, including venues such as the Mänttä Art Festival and Turku Art Museum. In 2019, she was chosen as the recipient of the William Thuring Foundation Prize. Her work is held in many of Finland’s most prestigious art collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Turku Art Museum and Vantaa Art Museum Artsi.
GALERIE FORSBLOM
Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki
