Anu Haapanen, Virva Kanerva, Anna Leppä and Janika Salonen
Like the Earth
Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari – Jätkä 1
1 – 16 August 2015
The artists behind the Like the Earth exhibition are sculptor Virva Kanerva and printmaker Janika Salonen as well as painters Anu Haapanen and Anna Leppä. Their works explore the earth and its residents, creating pictorial parallel universes, earth-like spaces.
Each artist has their own surreal imagery that explores reality. The works of the four artists form an exhibition that dives into a world that has been built with elements reminiscent of the everyday reality and our living environment, playing with them and bending the laws of the earth. In the imagery of the exhibition, the boundaries between humans and animals becomes blurred, human-like creatures form between themselves mental spaces that live in emptiness and imaginary landscapes serve as a stage for various events or stories. The four perspectives form an entity in which the works created using different techniques are linked to each other and communicate with each other.
Anu Haapanen’s paintings are landscape examinations, mythical spaces or utopias which have been invaded by traces of human presence or indicative traces of the story of an imaginary civilization. The spaces and landscapes built in the paintings serve as elements loaded with meanings or as a stage for a symbolic event or an undefined experience.
Virva Kanerva’s sculptures fall somewhere between realism and fantasy, playing with the imagery of popular culture and mystique. Kanerva uses animal figures when dealing with being a human and the surrounding world. An animal is easy to identify with and an animal can be free of the symbols that define humans but still animals are able to represent the emotions and other things experienced by humans.
Anna Leppä’s paintings explore the psychological spaces between people. The paintings contain subtle and ambiguous references to the social existence of humans, how societies are built and what it feels like. The paintings are flashes to a moment where the concepts have not yet been formed and they return to the original picture, to an obscure moment at the core of humanity.
Janika Salonen’s works are post-apocalyptic portrayals of a place where humans have left the stage and a few clear shapes play the leading role. Salonen projects human characteristics onto the inanimate geometric shapes, thus making them something the audience can identify with. Through the shapes the works portray the story of building a new form of life.
