Art Paris 201427. - 30.3.2014, Grand Palais / Stand D1

Galleria Heino presents works by the following artists:

ERNO ENKENBERG

ALVAR GULLICHSEN

MARKUS RISSANEN

TOPI RUOTSALAINEN

At this year´s Art Paris fair, Galleria Heino will be exhibiting the works of four contemporary Finnish artists, whose main medium is painting.

Three of the artists chosen for the 2014 showcase, Erno Enkenberg (b. 1975), Alvar Gullichsen (b. 1961) and Markus Rissanen (b. 1974) employ a hard-edged style characterised by the vivid use of colour, while Topi Ruotsalainen´s (b.1979) approach is more painterly and realistic. All four artists are graduates of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts.

Erno Enkenberg´s paintings are a reflection of society. He frequently depicts events conveyed in the news: terrorism, school shootings, natural disasters and other tragedies. He condenses news events into distanced archetypes of sorts. At the same time, events in our own era become part of the history of painting and the cycle of historical events. At Art Paris, Enkenberg is due to present two paintings depicting an Indian tribe that has isolated itself in the depths of the Amazon rainforest and whose way of understanding the world is entirely at odds with Western concepts.

Alvar Gullichsen´s paintings are non-figurative and geometrical, yet highly expressive. His works are abstract metaphysical landscapes. Their roots are in the pictorial world of the American indigenous peoples, the murals of the South African Ndebele people, Tibetan mandalas as well as in western modernism and its abstract tradition of painting and architecture.

The themes of Markus Rissanen´s paintings have always been connected with nature, although his way of experiencing the natural world is probably rather unique. In his mind, nature has always equated to the scientific laws that attempt to objectively describe the workings of the world. It is not a separate entity clearly distinguishable from human culture.

Topi Ruotsalainen depicts mainly everyday motifs, often capturing moments where a seemingly random assemblage of characters is brought together to form what seems almost like a group portrait. In the works due to be shown at Art Paris, sheep are employed as a symbol for human beings and also perform the role of a biblical figure. According to Ruotsalainen, his works are a kind of pastoral noir; paintings inspired by bucolic poetry.

Rauli Heino