Kristina Riska: Uncertainties
Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki
November 29, 2024 – January 12, 2025
Kristina Riska’s artistic process harnesses both the delicate malleability and the willful nature of clay. The artist describes herself as battling her material, attempting to achieve the impossible, which is why she was unsure until the last minute before the show’s opening how many of her sculptures would survive intact. When working with clay, one must humble oneself before the material – clay insists upon writing its own narrative. Its size and shape are transformed during firing in the kiln, as are the textures and colors imparted by glazes, thus conferring a key role to chance in the birthing process of ceramic art.
As an entirely new feature in Riska’s art, many of her recent sculptures are propped on struts, some resembling Japanese wooden geta sandals, others rounder like wheels or pompoms. By resting her sculptures on inbuilt pedestals, Kristina Riska has freed up wholly new avenues of expression in her construction of form. Each sculpture tells its own mini-story, and the titles hint at the underlying meanings in subtle, oblique ways. Instead of having a clear uniting theme, the sculptures in this exhibition were created intuitively, in states of mind ranging from joy to sorrow. They are richly diverse in style, yet each one has a counterpart or companion piece with which it engages in dialogue, creating cohesion within the exhibition.
Working with clay is just as inspiring to Kristina Riska today as it was forty years ago. She describes it as a huge privilege and gift. At the heart of her process is her desire to distill her craft to its purest essence – to strip everything down to the essentials and achieve total integrity of expression. While immersed in a project, she avoids looking at the work of other artists and strives to concentrate purely on her own creative process.
Kristina Riska (b. 1960) is one of Finland’s most internationally renowned ceramic artists. Her studio is based on the premises of the Arabia Art Department Society in Helsinki. She has won international awards and has exhibited her work everywhere, from the United States to Denmark and Japan. Her sculptures are held in numerous international private collections, as well as the collections of the Saastamoinen Foundation and the Finnish and Swedish governments.
GALERIE FORSBLOM
Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki
