Schedule:
Venue: Craft Museum of Finland
Link: Open the WWW page
The works in the exhibition invite the public to experience the materiality of art through the senses and touch. The theme has come from the suggestion of the Craft Museum of Finland to Taiteilijat O – Artists O.
All Artists O members were asked to propose a maximum of two works or drafts for the exhibition. The search for the artworks was on two-stages and anonymous, and 33 artists participated with 43 works. For the second stage, 28 artists were asked to sent material samples of 33 artworks. Of these, 18 artists and 22 artworks in total were selected for the exhibition.
The artists selected for the exhibition are: Tuuli Autio, Elli Hukka, Sirpa Hannele Heinonen, Niina Hiltunen, Leena Juvonen, Teemu Järvi, Minja Kolehmainen, Laura Merz, Mirja Niemelä, Wiebke Pandikow, Laura Pehkonen, Johanna Pöykkö, Piia Rossi, Melissa Sammalvaara, Ulla Sinkkonen, Päivi Vaarula, Anna-Mari Vierikko and Jana Vyborma-Turunen.
The curators of the exhibition, museum lecturer, textile artist, TaM Margarita Rosselló Ramón, from the Craft Museum of Finland, and researcher-artist, ceramic artist, TaT Priska Falin from Aalto University were responsible for the selection of works.
The curators talk about the theme of the exhibition
The artist often creates a relationship with the material he is working on by touching it with his hands. When working with a material, touching is an interaction where the creator feels the properties of the material, its workability and is able to follow the ‘will’ of the material through this touch-based interaction.
However, the experience of a work of art is very often left to the sense of sight, where the feel of the material is left to the imagination and is in the body of the experiencer as a memory of previous experiences. This in itself is interesting, but often the absence of touch leaves the art experience empty. We experience life with our whole body, with all our senses, but visual superiority numbs the sensitivity of other senses. When the sense of touch and sensibility are brought to the fore, how does the work change? The question is not how the work looks, but how the work feels, in this time and in this material world?
Sensory leads to a multi-sensory experience, where the artist can bring out the properties of the material that support their own work: how does the material touch us?
The exhibition visitor is given the opportunity to perceive various surfaces and textures, their softness, hardness, roughness or smoothness by touch. Feeling the work, the experiencer perceives its overall form, its size and details. How would the work be perceived if the most important sensation was touch instead of seeing? How does touch sensitize what we convey to the public with the sensory experience of art? Can the senses be challenged or guided?
Sensing other than based solely on visual perception opens up new meanings for the work and allows the experiencer to follow the artist’s handprint. The work is brought to the skin, like one’s own garment in contact with the experiencer.
Also read curator Margarita Rosselló Ramón’s blog post on the subject.
Curator introductions
Priska Falin
Priska Falin is a researcher-artist, who in her dissertation Relating to Clay: Tuning in to the Workings of the Aesthetic Dimension in Ceramic Practice focused on the creative process and especially on the close relationship with the material created through long-term making. The sensitive, feeling body is at the center of creative work, and in her research, Falin aims to understand the aesthetics of the creative experience. The close relationship with the material also appears to Falin as an essential part of our developing relationship with the environment and the life-sustaining world. Falin is currently working as a doctoral researcher at Aalto University, School of Arts and Design, Department of Design. Among other things, her duties include coordinating the Radical Ceramics project, teaching duties in the Design major Contemporary Design, among other academic duties. Falin also serves on the editorial board of RUUKKU, a periodical for artistic research.
Margarita Rosselló Ramon
Margarita Rosselló Ramón works as a museum lecturer at the Craft Museum of Finland. Her background is in textile design and fine art, the sum total of which in her works textiles play an essential role. Recycled textiles tell their own stories through wear. The frayed spot feels different from another spot on the canvas, and the fingertips start to think about stories that have gained new angles in the works but maybe otherwise shrouded in silence. Rosselló Ramón is interested in the multiple accessibility of exhibitions in their concreteness. How does the exhibition look if, for example, the sense of sight is limited when it is often the dominant one? What happens when you can touch the works in the museum? The aesthetics, whose starting point is not in the sense of sight, is interesting and opens the world of exhibitions to a wider one than is too familiar. She is interested in the worlds of memories that affect through different senses and the possibilities of the diversity of the work form.
In cooperation
Craft Museum of Finland
Kauppakatu 25, 40100 Jyväskylä
The Craft Museum of Finland is an expert in handicrafts and handicrafts, a nationally responsible museum, which includes The National Costume Center of Finland and the Conservation Center. The museum operates in Jyväskylä as part of the museum services of the city of Jyväskylä. The museum promotes handicraft as a profession, art and hobby.
www.craftmuseum.fi/en
Inquiries
nayttelyt@taiteilijato.fi
Exhibition working group: Niina Hiltunen, Leena Hyttinen, Virpi Vesanen-Laukkanen and Taiteilijat O producer Eeva Mäkinen.
On Senses
January 11 – April 27,2025
The Craft Museum of Finland
Kauppakatu 25, 40100 Jyväskylä
Opening January 10, 2025 at 6 p.m
www.craftmuseum.fi
