Eeva-Riitta Eerola: C
Helsinki Contemporary
11 April - 4 May 2025
Vessel (Garden) IV, 2025
Acrylic on canvas, 90 cm x 90 cm
Photo: Erno Enkenberg
Courtesy of Helsinki Contemporary
Vessel (Garden) III, 2025
Oil on acrylic on canvas, 46 cm x 50 cm
Photo: Erno Enkenberg
Courtesy of Helsinki Contemporary
EEVA-RIITTA EEROLAs paintings seem to materialize like apparitions, exuding effortless simplicity, but also a sense of potency. Echoing her desire to simplify, Eeva-Riitta Eerola has named her new exhibition after a single letter of the alphabet: C. This emblem can be read in many ways: as a visual symbol, as a phoneme, or even as a word. Visually, its shape both encloses and opens outwards, recalling the phase of the lunar cycle when the Moon is visible only as a narrow crescent. In ancient carvings, the map of the Garden of Eden is inscribed as a fertile crescent at the confluence of four rivers, or as a rounded vessel containing paradise.
Observer (Garden) III, 2025
Oil on acrylic on canvas, 42 cm x 33 cm
Photo: Erno Enkenberg
Courtesy of Helsinki Contemporary
Act (Garden) IV, 2025
Oil on acrylic on canvas, 50 cm x 80 cm
Photo: Erno Enkenberg
Courtesy of Helsinki Contemporary
Abstracted maps, streams and paths are among the prominent recurring elements in Eerola’s paintings, as are hands and eyes. The eye motif is significant in that the letter ‘C’ can represent the English verb ‘to see’, or its imperative form. Eerola’s paintings invite our gaze to roam and for us to immerse ourselves experientially. The eye and the hand can be interpreted as symbolizing the painting process: when painting is reduced to its basic essentials, the gaze and the manual gesture are the painter’s most important tools.
Eeva-Riitta Eerola’s paintings engage in close study of the way we humans experience images. She is interested in exploring painting’s ability to convey an experience of spatiality and presence. In her new exhibition, spatial experiences are conveyed through images of gardens. Eerola’s gardens are semi-abstract, however, representing more of a conceptual and symbolic space than a physical one.
Courtesy of Helsinki Contemporary
Eerola’s practice also reflects her interest in the history of painting. In the exhibition C, Eeva-Riitta Eerola has drawn inspiration from symbolism, an historic art movement that used symbolic images to suggest emotions and universal human experiences. She first became interested in symbolism after experiencing a death in her family as a teenager. What especially drew her to symbolism was its compelling manner of invoking death, life, continuity, finality and infinity. While preparing for this exhibition, Eeva-Riitta Eerola took inspiration from a beloved painting of her youth, The Garden of Death (1896) by Hugo Simberg, a small-scale depiction of skeletons tenderly caring for uncanny flowers in a garden situated somewhere between the living and the dead.
HELSINKI CONTEMPORARY
Bulevardi 10 - 00120 Helsinki
