SANOMISTA – Päivi Allonen, Silja Puranen, Pekka Syrjälä

The common thematic focus of the Sanomista group exhibition by Päivi Allonen, Silja Puranen, and Pekka Syrjälä is the relationship between image and language – word – text – narrative. In 2014, the Sanomista exhibition travels from Gallery Napa in Rovaniemi to Turku, and after the Poriginal Gallery in Pori in the autumn, it moves to the Huuto Gallery in Jätkäsaari, Helsinki. In February 2015, Sanomista will be on display at the Mältinranta Art Center in Tampere. Each exhibition space will feature a different exhibition ensemble.

Visual artist Päivi Allonen explores everyday phenomena in her works. She addresses the individual’s need for power and its manifestations. Power tends to grow, diminish, change its form and nature depending on the surrounding conditions. A central role in her works is played by group dynamics, interaction skills, and the individual’s desire to belong to a group. Despite the diversity of techniques, Allonen’s paintings and three-dimensional works share a strong and unified visual language.

Silja Puranen is a storyteller who critically examines society. The characters and situations in Puranen’s works hint at human power relations with their environment. Her latest works focus on issues such as the overuse of natural resources, growing waste mountains, and the ethics and ecology of food production. The main subjects of her images are animals – especially the pig, which serves as a symbol of human civilization. Although Puranen’s theme appears in this exhibition as an increasingly dark dystopia testing the limits of the planet’s sustainability, her expression contains a unique, twisted humor. Puranen does not preach but tells stories and leaves room for the viewer to continue the narrative of the work.

Sculptor Pekka Syrjälä’s works are sculptures of words. The works often depict written words or speech, the act of saying. In the works, the abstract meanings of verbal language and the visual language of physical materials and forms interact and redefine each other. “By using written words and speech as the starting point for my works, I want to question the object nature of the work. What if the work is an independent subject with its own will, speaking directly and without asking permission? The work might flirt and suggest all sorts of obscenities to us from the wall.”

The exhibition has been supported by the Kone Foundation.

Translated with Copilot