Maija Luutonen

Opening on Thursday, February 8, at 6pm.

In February, Finnish artist Maija Luutonen will fill Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma’s Studio K, a 9-meter high gallery room with a new commission work. She is the first artist in the series called Kiasma Commission by Kordelin, lauched to promote Finnish contemporary artists.

The first Kiasma Commission by Kordelin artist Maija Luutonen works primarily with painting mainly on paper-based materials by exploring and expanding its boundaries and potential.

Considering the surface as something transient, Luutonen addresses the relation between time and movement, treating the works as moving images, though ones that shift too slowly for the human eye or lifetime. Her practice often concerns spatial immersion, our relation to the built environment, and nature, at every scale. Reflecting on spatiality through a flat surface, the artist deals with notions of seemingly enclosed spaces and rooms.

“There are no concrete objects in Maija Luutonen’s work, or sometimes details of concrete objects, such as clothing or textiles, are so enlarged that they become abstract again. Abstract, yet subtly refined like silk draperies and clothing on the flat bodies of saints in Medieval altar paintings. Textures become spaces with volumes and dimensions, depths and surfaces. So at the same time it is unavoidably about figures and objects in space, within space, veiled and unveiled by space. Objects and figures that are most often not there, not in the frame of a painting. Thus it is more about you, the viewer, looking, contemplating, at these finely painted surfaces of large paper sheets in an exhibition room,” writes artist, curator, writer Neringa Černiauskaitė in the exhibition catalogue.

For the show at Kiasma, Luutonen will create a new installation to be exhibited in Studio K. The commissioned work will make use of the distinctive properties of the gallery space. ”In my latest ensemble of works I have thought of the exhibition space as a conflict-filled container for ambiguous, even embarrassing feelings. The works form a part of a chain of thought that evolves and mutates. The works are linked together and can be combined to form diverse compositions. In this process, printing and borrowing of image materials form a natural aspect of the development of the idea—i.e. ultimately, the work. The composition as a whole is evolving; the process has been kicked off,” Maija Luutonen describes her working process.

Maija Luutonen (b. 1978) graduated with an MFA from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2006. She has exhibited her work in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Finland and in the Baltic and Nordic countries. She has work in several Finnish art collections and was awarded the Ducat Prize by the Finnish Art Society in 2012.

Kiasma Commission by Kordelin is a new Finnish concept for promoting and producing contemporary art. Centring around the production of one project every year, the concept aims to provide international exposure for emerging Finnish artists and for Finnish contemporary art. The commissioned work will be included in museum’s collection. The project is funded by the Alfred Kordelin Foundation.