GROUP EXHIBITION 17.9.2022 – 16.10.2022

The group exhibition at Galleria Heino presents eight of the gallery’s new artists, six of whom have yet to hold a solo exhibition in the gallery. The exhibition features a selection of works previously displayed in artists’ other exhibitions. The works are interconnected thematically.

The works downstairs in the gallery comment on society since the turn of the millennium. In his Block series (2015), Aapo Huhta (b.1985), who was Young Artist of the Year 2020, depicts an urban lifestyle in blocks on Wall Street in New York. Huhta had a solo exhibition of his Block series at Fotografiska in Stockholm in 2016, having been the winner of the museum’s Young Nordic Photographer of the Year 2015 award. Huhta’s work has been categorised as experimental documentation.

The works by SerraGlia (b.1979) and Pekko Vasantola (b.1994) tell about the transformation in communication, the changed nature of communication between people, and the human image in the age of digital devices and social media. In his Traces: Portrait of a Digital Life series (2014), SerraGlia photographs the fingerprints people leave behind when they swipe their touch screen mobile phones and iPads. In his series Gaze on Facebook Profile (2022), Vasantola shows the eye movements of Facebook users when they view their own profile picture through glasses that track eye movements. Vasantola has engraved the web of lines formed by the eye movements on glass sheets. The brands of a market society and their relevance in guiding people’s life and choices can be seen in Aaron Heino’s (b.1977) sculptures.

Upstairs in the gallery, Pauliina Pietilä (b.1982) continues the downstairs theme of the urban environment. She photographs nocturnal street scenes, including display windows, and uses her photographs as the basis for her paintings, where reality ultimately becomes an illusion in the human mind. Marko Backman (b.1977) continues the same theme in his surreal depictions conveying human emotional states.

Minna Rainio (b. 1974) and Mark Roberts (b. 1970) make up the artist duo Rainio & Roberts. The problems of the modern world from the perspective of the destruction of nature feature in their short film To Teach a Bird to Fly (2020), which tells about a critically endangered bird species and efforts to save it from extinction. In this fictionalised story, the narrative voice from the future tells about the state of the planet 80 years from now. In the future, everything has changed: humanity has halted climate change and created a new kind of relationship and bond with other species. The work seeks to create the hope of a better world for people of today. The work won the Risto Jarva Prize at the Tampere Film Festival in 2020. Rainio & Roberts’ production has been categorised as docufiction.

Brothers Juha Vehviläinen (b.1978) and Vesa Vehviläinen (b.1974) make up the artist duo Pink Twins. Pink Twins’ animated work The Transient (2022) shows the growth of real and imaginary plants. The work is like a vision of nature waking up to spring and its power to uplift the mind, yet at the same time reminding us in its uncontrollability of the omnipotence of nature, which is ultimately greater than human might.

Rauli Heino