Finnish artists at l'USINE again

Krista Autio: painting
Tiina Heiska: painting
Tiina Itkonen: photography
Elena Kervinen: drawing, painting
Mikko Paakkola: painting
Paavo Räbinä: video, installation
Hannele Rantala: installation
Kai Rennes: photography, installation
Ulla Shemeikka: photography
Marjukka Vainio: photography

Krista Autio, born 1968 in Finland. She lives and works in Brussels/B.

Mostly she is painting with oil on canvas. With her works she is playing with large monochrome spaces on which she draws contours of objects and inscriptions of single words. Some of these signs or fractures seem to tell histories about specific situations in live. Others could be orders or experiments to express oneself. « En ses tableaux, les surfaces sont saturées d'une teinte monochrome qui, à part le noir dense, se distingue par les nuances, notamment du vert et du rouge, qui aspirent, qui conduisent à l'introspection et concourent ainsi à l'ambiance confirmée par les interventions écrites ou dessinées. » (Claude Lorent, L aLibre Belgique)

Tiina Heiska, born 1959 in Helsinki, where she is still living.

She is painting “in search of an absolute object of desire. … The woman or girl in her pictures – her age seems to vary – is based on photographs the artist has taken of herself. Yet she is not just Heiska, she is something different – perhaps an alter ego or a fictional character. … For some years now, Heiska has painted series in which her themes evolve from one painting to the next, and her expression has become more cinematic and flowing. She is interested in spaces where the presence of another person can be sensed but not seen. Her paintings convey a sensing of the presence of the invisible in a manner that is menacing but also exciting and even arousing.” (Juha-Heikki Tihinen, art historian)

Tiina Itkonen, photographer, born in Helsinki, where she is still living.

Since the early nineties the Far North fascinated her. Several times she spend weeks with the Polar Eskimos in Greenland. “When I close my eyes I am in Thule, and the silence is perfect. Blueish light dances across the snow; the icebergs glow turquoise. The silence is broken by a loud crack. An iceberg splits, creating new, smaller icebergs. In an instant the light transforms the landscape from beautifully mellow to frightening sombre. …Visiting people is a part of everyday live for Polar Eskimos. When you go to visit someone, there is no need to arrange it in advance or knock on the door. You just step right in. (Tiina Itkonen)

Elena Kervinen, born 1970 in Isalmi, Fin. She lives and works in Barcelona/E.

She is doing small size drawings on marble and paintings of oil and copper on wood. Her preferred subjects are landscapes. “When I look at “my castle and its mountain”, I am what I am. It doesn’t make any difference, what I have, know or am. The landscape is in a constant creation; the mountain and the castle are always different and I can’t change anything of it. But the view changes me. ... Somebody said that more than landscapes my paintings are sentiments. I think he was right; my intention is to transmit, what moves me in this view.” (Elena Kervinen)

Mikko Paakkola, born 1961 in Lappi Tl. He is living and working in Turku/Fin.

“I have been studying an imaginary landscape that could also been seen as a borderline between the abstract and figirative painting. In these pictures I also take a position for the minimal art and monochrome painting; both has been influenced a lot my work specially by the very reduced scale of colours, even though the philosophy in my works takes a completely opposite direction. My works have a direct reference to our subcincious ways of thinking and that way they are linked to the archetypical forms. ...I am basicly working with the emotional part of the human mind and the acts of the painting are to be seen as a trial to visualize that.” (Mikko Paakkola)

Paavo Räbinä, born 1965 in Kupio/Fin. He lives and works in Helsinki and Brussels.

The mains topics of Räbinä´s art, mainly videos and installations, include war, violence, struggles for power, suffering and life as a refugee. Also Räbinä often finds the topics for his works from historical or literary sources, in the ”scar material” of our society or culture. His works have had a wide range of starting points such as the Finnish Civil War, devaluation, the power of money and poverty resulting from economic depression, as well as poems by Brecht and plays by Shakespeare. Despite their historical undertones, Räbinä`s works have always been very topical.

Hannele Rantala, born 1952 in Helsinki, she lives and works in Helsinki and Brussels.

Her installation « On the other side » consists of four pairs of photos of the Atlantic shoreline. In the first picture a wave leaves from Lisbon, Portugal, so as to arrive in New York in the next one. Several months have passed between the taking of the pictures. Under each of the photos are the times they were taken, which are also the times when the wave left or arrived. On the European continent, the locations where the pictures were taken are Lisbon, Bordeaux, and Santiago de Compostela. In America, the shore of arrival and departure is in New York.
All these cities of whose shores pictures have been taken are linked historically by migration and refugeehood. Whichever shore we are on there is always another shore somewhere that is the focus of our thoughts, hopes or memories.

Kai Rennes, born 1958, lives and works in Brussels.

The series of photos is from the Dunes of Maspalomas (Canary Islands). The place is well known as cruising place with lots of manmade love nests.
Kai Rennes works on painting, photo, installation, video concentrate on different kind strategies of organizing our personal life and alternative practices of love, desire and sexuality.

Different places,
other strategies

Ulla Shemeikka, born 1969 in Koupio/Fin. She lives and works as a photographer in Brussels/B.

Silence, colour and time play an important role within the photography of Ulla Shemeikka. Also the circumstances during the act of exposure leave their marks in the images created by the artist. Her portraits of landscapes are made during the night by moonlight or in the early morning just before sunrise. Each second develops and changes with the upcoming light the colours and formations. And while the shutter of the camera has to stay open for minutes to catch the latent picture the photographer has one of the rare opportunities to concentrate on the silence of morning and has time to reflect about life and creation. In the artist’s works the spectator can find an approach to timelessness and the grandeur of nature. Her images generate lust to regard and a smooth longing for meditation.

Marjukka Vainio, photographer, born 1953 in Renko/Fin. She lives and works in Hämeenlinna/Fin.

For almost two decades, the plant kingdom has signified both microcosm and macrocosm for the art of Marjukka Vainio. The main consideration has been the moment of seeing, where something more, a whole universe, opens up in things small, unnoticed and ordinary. The works contain so much that is hidden, mysterious, and things invisible made visible, that they seem to tell of the light of the earth. The light of the earth is the beauty of the hidden reverse face. Marjukka Vainio’s works come about through a complex process. A similarity with crafts imbues the pieces with a strong respect for beauty. Aesthetics blends with ethics. In their beautiful light of the earth Marjukka Vainio’s works move in the strata of conscience and memory.

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