LIISA LOUNILA: BEEN TRYING TO MEET YOU6.3.-9.4.2009
Kalhama&Piippo has the great pleasure to open artist Liisa Lounila’s (b. 1976) solo exhibition, which presents an entirely new kind of body of work by the artist. Along with the video piece Niagara (2009), Lounila presents works in different media, light- and object based works, drawings and paintings.
Lounila made her debut at the Venice Biennale in 2003. Already at this time the young artist representing Finland made an impression with her nostalgic and static aesthetic. Dark and industrial-like atmosphere of hers is in the new works combined with feelings of longing and waiting. These every-day experiences are often hard to express in words.
“In my exhibition works I explore the subject of the loss of the loved one, drifting apart from mutual communication and understanding. The material of my work consists of text messages sent in the early night time hours, the oppressive emotionality of the flower symbols in funeral bouqets, neon lights rather rebuffing than tempting, abandoned sneakers or the darkening Niagara. They are all glimpses of moments of the loss, when the smallest detail in one’s surrounding can become a symbol of the situation and which seen several years later can bring out the same suffocating feeling.” Liisa Lounila
Liisa Lounila is an artist from Helsinki, who is currently working at an artitsts recidency in New York. Lounila has participated in group exhibitions all over the world and her videos have been screened at numerous film festivals since the beginning of the 90s. She has held solo shows at for example Wilkinson Gallery in London and Gallery of Photography in Dublin. The exhibition at Kalhama&Piippo is part of Lounilas doctorate studies at the Finnish Academy of Fine Art.
Image inquiries: Mikaela Lostedt, exhibition coordinator, 09-2785301 / 040-7404901or info(at)kalhamapiippo.com
Gallery Kalhama & Piippo Contemporary