Äkkigalleria 8 – Landscape now

Äkkigalleria 8 is a low-key, comforting exhibition that takes us close into the moment of now.

The participating artists are: Anita Hannunen, Jonna Jantunen, Kapa, Carita Savolainen, Rune Snellman, and Tuukka Toijanniemi. All of the artists are from Central Finland. The work in this exhibition consists of drawing, printing, painting, photography, sound and light installation.

Anita Hannunen is a Central Finnish painter. For the past decade, her work focuses on the representation of the typical Finnish lakeside landscape. Muted tones and rich texture modify the familiar landscape into deep contrasts in cool colours. Hannunen’s images expose the hidden nature, or the sensed temperament of this seemingly placid environment.

For Äkkigalleria 8, Hannunen has made a new series of winter landscapes which focus on the quiet, cold, dark and beauty of this season.

Kapa is an established Central Finnish photographer, founder and long time member of the Centre for Creative Photography. His experimental photography techniques often combine photographic images with found objects of historical or personal meaning. Kapa’s current practice deals primarily in digital photography. He observes and captures moments from his environment: cropping and directing the general regard to focus on specific elements of our daily landscape.

For Äkkigalleria 8, Kapa was invited to show a new breathtaking landscape-image, captured during a recent residency in Northern Yorkshire, England. Kapa will also present an older, and more colourful series of small images, taken during a residency in Benin 2003, that have never been shown in Central Finland.

Jonna Jantunen is a young Central Finnish printmaker, working with a broad range of printing techniques including, lithography, dry-point etching, mezzotint, woodcut, carborundum, and photo etching. Jantunen’s aesthetic for colour and texture naturally form sensitive landscape imagery that often serves as the background for her creations. Though calculated experimentation, combining different printing techniques, she represents instances suspended in time, like stills from movie; moments from a larger story.

For Äkkigalleria 8, Jantunen has made a series of new images on the theme of Landscape.

Rune Snellman is an established Central Finnish photographer, long time member of the Centre for Creative Photography, and passionate coordinator of the Jyväskylä pinhole camera club. Snellman currently works with both digital photography and pinhole techniques. During the past decade, his digital images have primarily examined nature and landscapes featuring portraits of decaying flowers and fruit and broad panoramas of landscapes from all over the world.

For Äkkigalleria 8, Snellman is presenting a new series of images inspired by the winter snow. With these images Snellman explores a new kind of panorama-landscape by enlarging details observed from his winter wonderland.

Carita Savolainen is an international painter who studied and lived in France for many years before moving to Belgium. She now lives and works in both in her hometown, Jyväskylä, and in Brussels where she she now resides. Savolainen’s practice is rooted in the observation of Landscape. Her paintings explore colour and feeling generated from lakeside landscapes where sky and water merge.

Savolainen responded to the Äkkigalleria 8 invitation with two brand new projects. Maisema: huone I-IV (Landscape: room I-IV) are a series of drawings inspired by the outside views from her windows at home. In these images are both observed and imagined (dreamed) visions of her environment. The images combine imagined landscape with drawing from observation. Savolainen’s second project is a site-specific installation, Visit my garden, which invites the visitor along for a walk in her neighbourhood park by means of a mirror.

Tuukka Toijanniemi is a Central Finnish artist working with a divers array of materials and techniques, but specializes in light, neon and sound installations. With line he creates simplified forms which allude to various themes. Toijanniemi’s installations glow in an eerie atmosphere: a darkness created by light.

Toijanniemi will show a neon work, AntarcTIC, from 2006 which will be shown in Jyväskylä for the first time. Along with this light installation he will also present a more recent soundscape.