MARJUKKA VAINIOKimono 13.11.2010 – 5.12.2010

My exhibition Kimono consists of photographs and an installation where light and shadow, darkness and glowing colours alternate.

The title of the exhibition alludes to two areas: the world of plants − a theme with which I have already worked for some time − and oriental aesthetics, which have a history going back thousand of years. The shimmering silks and intricately woven patterns of Chinese, Korean and Japanese clothing − kimono as worn in Japan - have provided the inspiration for the Kimono installation and for the entire exhibition. Kimonos and the orient have not, however, been the direct starting point for the works; I have looked towards oriental aesthetics rather through my own subject matters. At the same time, I adhere to the Western tradition of visual art in which the impressionists of the late 19^th century sought links with the aesthetics of the East.

I have worked with plant motifs since the 1980s in my exhibitions series and photographic works such as The Magic Garden, Hommage à Ester Helenius, The Land of Vanai and Light of the Earth. In the works of the Kimono exhibition, I return to the experimental colour techniques I developed at the end of the 1980s and during the 1990s and to the contentual and aesthetic bases of the works of that period.

The works in the exhibition have been produced with various methods and consist of black and white images, silver-dye-bleach and pigment prints as well as chromogenic colour prints. The Kimono installation is made up of two textile sculptures onto which moving images are projected.

Marjukka Vainio