Topi Juntunen
Inside the Emptiness
18 July – 11 August 2024
You are welcome to meet the artist on Sat-Sun 10-11 Aug at 12-6pm.
My exhibition features a series of paintings with not much color. The themes are related to spending time in nature and keeping warm. The exhibition takes the visitor to different indoor spaces and natural landscapes through paintings depicting empty rooms, desolate forest landscapes and camping gear. The paintings refer to existing locations, but they combine elements from different photographs.
Most of the paintings are from the spring of 2024 and based on photographs I have found from different places, such as online marketplace advertisements for used camping gear.
The name of the exhibition refers to an experience of inner emptiness, deprivation at the core of a human experience and an experience of being in the middle of emptiness. To be inside something that creates a feeling of being inside but something that, at the same time, is nothing. The figures in my paintings encounter a nocturnal, impenetrable natural environment. When nature is depicted in this way in my paintings, it represents the original environment that is the most meaningful in an individual’s life. Paradoxically, motherly protection as well as anxiety and fear of being at the mercy of natural forces are simultaneously present in the works.
Topi Juntunen (b. 1986) is an artist living and working in Kuopio. He has studied at the Lahti Institute of Fine Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts (MFA 2021). He mainly works with paintings created using different techniques. His previous solo exhibition was on display at Galerie Pleiku in Berlin.
Contact information
juntunentopi(a)gmail.com
www.topijuntunen.com
