Jukka Rusanen: Pursuit
17.4-24.5.2009
Gallery Kalhama&Piippo is delighted to open the solo exhibition of new works by young painter Jukka Rusanen (b. 1980). In addition to paintings, Rusanen’s body of work apprehends video and photographic works, in which the painterly thinking is taken into a new form. In connection to the exhibition the third artist book of the gallery’s publication series is published. In the article ”Mise-en-scène and mise-en-abyme” Art Historian, PhD Inkamaija Iitiä describes Rusanen’s strong painting in the following way:
”In his oeuvre Jukka Rusanen plays with the charged contradictions of the stylistic codes of Classicism and Rococo: [ -- ]. Rusanen often employs pleated cloth and gathered drapery that refer to the classic tradition of art with its formal notions of beauty as well as to the drop-curtain and the meanings of the canvas. The works are also mise-en-scène; while internalising the performance space they question the borders of fiction by adopting the exhibition space as one of their frames. [ -- ]. The tradition of painting is an important point of reference to Rusanen, and his scale runs from the sky-blue and spring-green distances of classic landscape painting to Fragonard’s Swing and the domestic Pyykkärit.”
Jukka Rusanen has graduated from the Department of Fine Art, Turku Polytechnic in 2005 (BFA) and from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2007 (MFA). Earlier Rusanen has exhibited at the gallery of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts (2007) and at Galleria Jangva, Helsinki (2006). Rusanen has participated in a variety of group exhibitions, most recently at Pori Art Museum, in the exhibition titled ”The Site of Painting” (2009) and the International Triennale of Contemporary Art in Prague (2008).
Gallery Kalhama & Piippo Contemporary