Porin Saskiat ry, Scholarship Exhibition 2004

Leena Kleemola
Bethlehem Steel – Paintings and Drawings

Two summers ago, while spending a few weeks in a small town in Pennsylvania, USA, I encountered an old steel mill. I was shaken by the sight of the factory. It looked like a giant machine stripped of its outer shell. Its presence dominated the landscape of the small town, yet I could never get very close to the facility, surrounded by fences and a river. This mysterious vision etched itself into my mind and ultimately inspired my artistic work.

For the exhibition at Poriginal Gallery, I have created a series of works, all of which take the world of machines as their starting point. My approach to the subject is purely aesthetic and romanticized. My fascination with machines and industrial plants stems from their strangeness and mystery—I have not delved into their functional aspects. In my visual world, machines have a life of their own, where cold steel and human emotion intertwine as one.

Kati Lehtonen – Printmaking

I am originally from Luvia and currently live and work in Hämeenlinna. Last spring, I graduated from Kankaanpää Art School as a visual artist specializing in printmaking. The exhibition features my newest works, completed this summer, as well as pieces from my graduation project.

The artworks are serigraphs, characterized by a visual language of traditional abstract imagery and kinetics. My compositions are simple, and I often revisit the same theme repeatedly, exploring how the nature of form and color changes. Many contrasts influence the creation of my images. They exist somewhere between deliberation and intuition, sensitivity and intensity, the feminine and the masculine, emotion and systematization. Abstract imagery offers an endless array of possibilities.

This text was created with AI assistance