TRACES – Tiina Raitanen, Emma Rönnholm, Salla Vapaavuori
The Traces exhibition is a joint exhibition of three Helsinki-based visual artists: Tiina Raitanen, Salla Vapaavuori, and Emma Rönnholm. The artists address the themes of concealment, secrets, and their representation through their own creative processes. The works in the exhibition create juxtapositions and jumps between the world of stories and the contemplation of the content and spatiality of objects and forms.
Salla Vapaavuori
What kind of world is it, really? How should one relate to it? Are there predetermined truths, or can truths be defined by oneself? What role do I have among others? What is friendship? How selfish can a person be? A child’s world is anarchistic, ugly-beautiful, and rough. Secretly, all sorts of things are tried out from parents. Experiences gradually transform into memories: stories that don’t always carry a lesson, like fairy tales in a storybook.
For this exhibition, Salla Vapaavuori has brought part of her work Määhän vaan kokkeilin. The work consists of six short stories and installations connected to the stories. The stories are based on real events, set in her childhood home and its surroundings. They reveal the cruelty and hurt hidden in friendships, jealousy between friends, and concerns over one’s importance. They talk about relationships with the opposite sex and infatuation. In these absurd stories, personal limits are tested, and needs are satisfied – sometimes at the expense of others.
Tiina Raitanen
Tiina Raitanen’s works are built according to the situation. What does the gallery look like? What is the relationship between the works of each artist? What is the place, history, and lifespan of a work?
During her visits to various museums and galleries, Raitanen has paid attention to empty spaces for works, exhibitions under construction, unfinished rooms, extra clutter in corners, and so-called mistakes in the exhibition space. These signs of change and transition could be understood as independent works in the context of contemporary art, but they were not in those situations. Till the next end installation was inspired by these observations. It is an absurd series of materials, removal, loss, transformation, and discoveries.
Emma Rönnholm
Emma Rönnholm’s works deal with uncertain and hidden forms.
Rönnholm is interested in formlessness, “lumps,” as a visual counterpart to silence or even quietness. When thoughts and feelings are verbalized or spoken aloud, they become existent for others as well. Clarity, visibility, and certainty enable communication and shared reality. However, behind clear truths, there is always vagueness and various possibilities. This other dimension is more personal and harder to share. Rönnholm has, somewhat irrationally, tried to encapsulate these contradictions in physical objects.
In the work Filled Emptiness, she has searched inside decorative objects representing vague forms. The target was hollow porcelain, plastic, and rubber figures, inside which the artist has poured plaster. The shape hidden inside the smooth, clear outer shell can be rough and nearly abstract.
The artists graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2011–2012.
Vapaavuori works with spatial pieces, utilizing various techniques from sculpture to sound, light, video, and text. Raitanen combines painting, sculpture, and found elements in her installations.
Rönnholm creates spatial and object-based works, often utilizing motors and other mechanics. The works are thought experiments based on everyday materials and gestures.
Translated with ChatGPT