Vilma Pimenoff
WHAT IS LOVE?(BABY DON’T HURT ME)
Galleria Huuto Uudenmaankatu
04.10. – 22.10.
Quoting the 90s eurodance star Haddaway, Vilma Pimenoff’s exhibition asks “What is love?” Instead of just romantic love, the exhibition reflects on how the images, stories and examples of love around us affect our behavior, how we treat each other and what we believe is right or wrong.
The exhibition suggests that human beings are equally capable of doing good and bad things. What is interesting is that our cultural imagery with angels and devils usually portrays good and evil as clearly separate things, as opposites to each other. Life, however, seems much more complicated than this, sometimes the most pious turns out to be the most sinful, and vice versa. What happens ‘in the name of love’ is sometimes contradictory. This makes one question whether the end really justifies the means?
The exhibition featuring photographs and installations utilizes everyday imagery and symbols that are related to love, innocence and evil. By presenting familiar things in a different way, the artist questions the existing myths of love created and reinforced by our visual culture.
“So what is right and what is wrong? Gimme a sign…” Haddaway sings. In her works, Pimenoff deals with cultural meanings and the forming of meanings, in other words the semantics of signs. She often uses an object or a picture as a starting point for her works.
What about Haddaway? Because love is also characterized by the fact that it is hard to define, we all pick meanings from where we find them. Sometimes something light and entertaining may appear meaningful and serious and, on the other hand, serious may appear light-hearted.
Vilma Pimenoff’s works have been exhibitied at The Photographers’ Gallery in London, at the Circulation(s) photography festival at Centre CentQuatre in Paris and as giant blow-ups in Paris metro stations, at the Moscow Multimedia Art Museum in Russia and at galleries in Sweden, Italy, France and the UK. In 2017 Pimenoff received the Edit -Editorial Photographer of the Year –price in Finland for her photos in Image magazine and she was also rewarded as part of the Celeste Prize competition in Florence, Italy.
Pimenoff has a Master of Arts degree in photography (LCC / University of the Arts London). She currently lives and works in Helsinki.
vilmapimenoff(at)gmail.com
www.vilmapimenoff.com
tel: 0509118999
