Hanna Hyy, Lasse Juuti, Tuuli Kerätär, Linda Roschier
Modern Love
Helsinki Contemporary, Helsinki
26 November - 19 December, 2021
In place of a common theme the exhibition Modern Love at Helsinki Contemporary highlights the uniqueness of four different painters, providing a sample of the state of current contemporary painting right now.
Tämänhetkinen tilanteesi / Your Current Situation, 2021
Watercolour and oil on sandwich board, 120 x 100 cm
© Hanna Hyy, Photo: Jussi Tiainen, Courtesy Helsinki Contemporary
The starting points for Hanna Hyy’s paintings are various models: toys, ornaments, and biological specimens. She begins her process by looking for objects, often finding them in flea markets, but occasionally also in rubbish skips, as with the biological specimens that have now been given space in her new works. After choosing an object or objects, Hyy constructs a still life, which she paints ‘from life’. The inanimate model for the painting is humanized into being a ‘substitute experiencer’, a figure with whom we can identify, and who appears as the painting’s actor or on whose viewpoint the work is based. Hyy’s paintings seek to raise issues and experiences that elude everyday language, and also coincident contradictions.
HANNA HYY (b. 1990 Helsinki), graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, in 2019. She has had solo exhibitions, for instance, at Galleria Huuto and Kosminen in Helsinki, and appeared in group exhibitions in Finland and abroad, including the Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition. Hyy’s paintings are in several private collections and the Hämäläis-Osakunta (Tavastia Nation) collection. Thank you to the Arts Promotion Centre Finland for supporting the artist's work.
Exhibition view: Modern Love
© Lasse Juuti, Photo: Jussi Tiainen, Courtesy Helsinki Contemporary
One of the starting points for Lasse Juuti’s works that combine painting, collage and object assemblages has been games and nest building. In the Modern Love exhibition we see two painting/sculpture hybrids on the floor, in the form language of one we find a car and in the other a trailer, transformed into a ping-pong court and a sarcophagus. Typical of Juuti’s works is, on the one hand, the key role played by the materials, but also the construction of disparate visual narratives. On this occasion, a series of paintings made on large plywood boards is linked via its materials to the floor-standing works, which converse with one another to tell a story. In the plywood boards leaning against the wall Juuti constructs a work using both painting and collage.
LASSE JUUTI (b. 1990 Tampere) has studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, and Tampere School of Art and Communication. He has had solo exhibitions at Monitoimitila O. in Helsinki, Titanik in Turku, and HAM Gallery in Helsinki. Most recently Juuti’s works were shown in the summer 2021 Porvoo Triennial. His works are represented in HAM’s and Kiasma’s collections. Thank you to the Arts Promotion Centre Finland and the Finnish Cultural Foundation (Uusimaa Regional Fund), for supporting the artist's work.
Soft rubble, 2021
Oil on canvas, 154 x 150 cm
© Tuuli Kerätär, Photo: Jussi Tiainen, Courtesy Helsinki Contemporary
Tuuli Kerätär’s abstract paintings move forwards without prior planning, in a dialogue between forms and colours. The sketching and the partially erased layers become part of the works, creating the feeling of dense, layered space characteristic of Kerätär’s works. In her paintings she returns to memories of places where she has felt she could see behind the physical surroundings. Other paintings also act as stimuli for further works, and she has recently been particularly interested in Frans Marc. The motifs of Kerätär’s latest works are grids and squares, which allude to a space viewed through a digital screen. The glow seen through the grids becomes the central element in the works. At times, it illuminates the space like the warm California morning sun that ripens fruit. While, at other times, the glow is pale and cold, like looking into a stranger’s apartment from the outside, into an empty room filled with the light from a television.
TUULI KERÄTÄR (b. 1985 Turku) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, in 2019. She has had solo exhibitions, e.g., at the Exhibition Laboratory Project Room in Helsinki, and at Gumbostrand Konst & Form in Sipoo, and appeared in group exhibitions in Helsinki, Rovaniemi and Antwerp. Kerätär’s works are in the collections of the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Rovaniemi Art Museum and Oulu University Hospital.
Double barred green cross remedy, 2021
Oil on canvas, 41 x 33 cm
© Linda Roschier, Photo: Jussi Tiainen, Courtesy Helsinki Contemporary
Linda Roschier’s painting process begins organically. The elements are built up one step at a time, with the painting carrying it forwards. Sometimes, a work has its starting point in another work, and the motif is repeated, but resolved in a slightly different way. Sometimes, Roschier’s small paintings serve as laboratories for large works, in which she can try out compositions and motifs. Looking and seeing are recurrent themes in her working process, as are various natural phenomena. The paintings in Modern Love contain numerous elements, such as sea shells, pearls, the plant world, and emojis, which evoke various mental associations in the viewer. These works are powerfully rooted in our time, but Roschier also feels an affinity with esoteric pictorial traditions, and occasionally makes references to modernism and earlier practices.
LINDA ROSCHIER (b. 1979 Vantaa) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, in 2020. She has had solo exhibitions at Galleria Huuto and the Exhibition Laboratory Project Room in Helsinki, and at Gallery Vanha Kappalaisentalo in Porvoo. Roschier has also taken part in group exhibitions and her works have been acquired by the Finnish Art Society and private collectors. Thank you to the Arts Promotion Centre Finland and the Finnish Cultural Foundation (Uusimaa Regional Fund), for supporting the artist's work.
HELSINKI CONTEMPORARY
Bulevardi 10, 00120 Helsinki
