YOU ARE JUST WATER AND SALT – Aeon Lux

“Is it possible for a person to change if they just try hard enough?” is a central question in Aeon Lux’s exhibition. How do we know when our situational awareness and behavior are guided by intuition and when by anxiety? How do we recognize our own limits if mental growth occurs outside our comfort zone? In the You Are Just Water and Salt exhibition, naive optimism and broken-winged realism coexist.

The You Are Just Water and Salt exhibition consists of ceramic sculptures and textile works. They are contextualized by the raw text of a short story, with its pages printed in the gallery space.

The short story tells the tale of a female sculptor and a trans man whose passion is sewing jeans. The sculptor Iines’s career is taking off when a young woman with a romanticized image of Iines as a sensitive artist steps into her studio. This woman, with her persistence, causes headaches for Iines, who has nothing to offer her. Hannes, on the other hand, has built a functional routine and healthy lifestyle over the years. He is a reclusive loner who, upon encountering a former classmate, begins to question the lack of romantic and sexual aspects in his life.

The sculptures focus on the theme of sexual awkwardness and reluctance in Hannes’s story. They depict embarrassment, a sense of oddness, nervousness, and the desire to be somewhere else rather than in the situation. The ceramic works are shaped like denim fabric that has become wet and drips into a puddle. The textiles are folded into futon-themed sculptures.

Aeon Lux is a visual artist from Seinäjoki who works with sculpture, performance, and video art. In her art, she explores the nature of realities: both the metaphysics of absolute reality and the altered states of consciousness of personal reality.

Translated with Copilot