Ainu is a Helsinki based light designer, who makes light art. Light for her means small miracles and the possibility for dimensions; light gives shape to things. She comments the things about the world that interest her using light as a media. Light can be a media for ideas to be presented to the world and a way to co-exist. Her interest is to show the world of everyday life through imaginative eyes. Her works often require some activity from the part of the viewer. Interconnection between maker and viewer is essential and the piece is practically not ready before it is seen. She can be said to be a visualizer of communication.
ALEXANDER REICHSTEIN (born 1957, Moscow) has lived and worked in Helsinki, Finland, since 1990, making art in different ways. He has been illustrating children books for international publishers, making
sculptures and designing playgrounds, leading workshops and arranging happenings, building up temporary and permanent exhibitions and installations in a wide range of institutions from day care centers to prominent art museums. Reichstein’s largescale exhibition projects balance on the edge between illusionism and elitist art, pop art and academic art, amusements for children and entertainment for aesthetes, while his playful interactive installations put viewers in touch with ancient myths and complex phenomena from cultural history.
While Reichstein has changed the topics, concepts, media and style of his works over the years, he has remained faithful to his method, based on the active communication between art objects and viewers. The public has the chance to complete Reichstein’s works conceptually and, sometimes, even physically. An important feature of Reichstein’s exhibitions is their mobility: they can be easily transported and installed. This has made it possible for museum- and festivalgoers in Finland, Sweden, Germany, Russia, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, France, Israel, Poland, Lithuania, Latviaand other countries to enjoy Reichstein’s installations.
Alexander’s work holds a special place in the artistic culture of Finland, where it was awarded the Finnish State Prize in 2008, the SLS prize in 2016, the Topelius Medal in 1999, and the Finlandia Junior Prize in 1997.
Light Artist
Alexander Salvesen primarily works with light in different forms. In his works he likes to emphasize colour, space and shape, and especially their relations to each other and to the viewer. He is interested in the manipulation of our perception and likes to, through his works, tickle the viewer's mind to reflect on their own senses and suggest a moment of serenity by just being present in the moment. Salvesen finds inspiration outside in nature and in its phenomena, but also in present political and socio economic situations.
I often create my works by studying light in different spaces and materials. My practice is guided by an aspiration to understand the behavior of matter. Seeing light as matter is both a concrete and an interpretative part of the works. In my most recent light utilizing work “Connection” I've created constantly changing wall sceneries through the interplay of static wall mounted objects and moving colored light. In the works from the series “Entropy” I've painted copper with heat and flame. The gas fueled flame colors copper with the tones of blue, yellow and red: copper becomes touched by light. In other pieces I have also made use of different kinds of mirroring materials, acrylics and other light reflecting surfaces and contrasted them with black space which fades out the proportions of the surrounding space.
Anne Roininen is best known of her light art installations in apartment buildings, in which homes are illuminated in different colours. With these socially engaged site-specific light art installations she has successfully worked since 2012. Her artworks are mainly created outside the galleries in city or countryside scape and often in collaboration with others.
Antti Pussinen works in the field of media, light, sound and fine arts.
Anu is a visual artist from Helsinki, Finland, working with light, painting, drawing, sculpture, video and performance. Light has been a unifying factor as a medium, subject and a metaphor in her work. Anu graduated from Finnish Academy of Fine Arts with a Masters Degree in December 2017 and has participated in solo and group exhibitions in Finland, Sweden, Japan and Italy.
Anu has developed a unique technique of light drawing that makes use of special painting medium and paper. She has found something new in this light drawing technique that plays with concepts of materiality and surface. Combining sculpting, drawing and light her works create their own world between familiar and alien, where light is the unifying, vitalizing force of the works.
Artist Collective Kunst was founded in spring 2013 by finnish artists Jarmo Palola, Anu Suhonen and Julia Weckman. January 2016 we got three members working with us; artists Christina Holmlund, Pia Paldanius ja Sirpa Päivinen. Together we do and make, plan and speak.
We organize performative exhibitions and events, develop all kinds of projects to work on. We curated and coordinated Gallery Lapinlahti in 2016-2019. In 2018 Kunst received Regional Art Prize of Uusimaa from Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
Lighting artist Ekku Peltomäki works as a lighting designer with the Komediateatteri Arena theatre in Helsinki, Finland. Peltomäki is a pioneer of Finnish theatre, landscape and exhibition lighting design and he has won the Finnish lighting work of the year with his lighting design for the Sapokka water park in 1993. In addition, he was named lighting designer of the year in 1988. Peltomäki's lighting design for the Cats musical in 1986 is still the largest stage production according to several criteria, and he has designed and constructed lighting for a number of stage productions ranging from classical ballet and opera to heavy rock. Ekku Peltomäki's most significant lighting exhibitions include Retretti 1988 exhibition, "Siniristit" ("Blue crosses on white"), Retretti 1989exhibition, "Elämän virta" ("Stream of life"), "Finlandia", Tytyri 1995 exhibition, "Valkoinen fantasia" ("White fantasy"), Tytyri 1996 exhibition, "Valon juhlaa" ("Celebration of light"), Tytyri 2002 exhibition, Tytyri 2003 exhibition – "Ekku Peltomäki: Valoteoksia" ("Works of light") and Tytyri- Myrsky Oratorio ( Storm Oratorio ).
Lighting designer and light artist, lighting coordinator for the city of Jyväskylä.
Emma Rönnholm graduated in 2011 from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, where she studied painting and sculpture. She works with sculpture and installation, often featuring light, movement or mechanical elements. The works are a conceptual play with daily gestures and everyday materials. In her light works, Rönnholm focuses on the interaction of light and other materials and light as an agent for movement or change. Her light installations include Serve Somebody (2017), Swipe (2018) and Evocation (2019).
Fern Orchestra is a bilingual, multifaceted multi-art group that has studied subjects such as photosynthesis, closed biosphere and the senses of plants in their works. Plants and micro-organisms operate as the orchestra's intruments while the works include performance art, contemporary dance, publications and light art. Fern Orchestra's works highlight the relationship between humans, light and nature.
We specialise in holographic decor, an unique way of creating 3D UV decor floating in the air.
Galleria Kandela is a lighting designer based trio, organising light art exhibitions and happenings. The basis of the work is to give lighting designers a platform to try out their work in a visual arts' context. Kandela has arranged workshops, exhibitions and combinations of the two. The members are: Sisu Nojonen, Mia Kivinen and Nanni Vapaavuori.
In her art, Stålnacke focuses on sculptures and installations made from recycled materials, in which light plays a key role. Thematically, she deals with environmental policy threats. At the heart of the works is the experiencer, a character of the future for whom memories and images of the world we know are distorted. They are colored by an apocalyptic landscape. Nature appears in the works as dream images built of trash. Despite the thematically gloomy undertone, the artist strives to find beauty where it is not usually seen.
Hexagon is a living experiment fusing the worlds of natural materials, sacred geometry and high technology. It’s a playground for arcane algorithms, occult bitstreams and tangible illusions.
Immanuel Pax is a Helsinki-based light artist and light art curator, who focuses on current social phenomena and underlying issues. Immanuel’s artworks combine a site-specific, interactive approach and most of them require public participation in order to be realised.
Isabella Chydenius (b.1988) is a Finnish interdisciplinary artist based in Helsinki and Berlin, Germany. Chydenius has recently graduated from a Master of Fine Art degree at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, in April 2021. Her research-based work focuses on investigating societal structures of femininity, gender and safety/violence. She is interested in the behavioural social constructs behind what constitutes as feminine and masculine in contemporary heteropatriarchal time. Her interdisciplinary conceptual work combines technologies such as light, sound, videography and interactive animation, to create experiential installations. Chydenius uses the medium of light in the specific colour of Club Pink as a metaphor for topics of her research. She also works with more traditional mediums like textiles, thread, clay, painting and found objects which she uses to form sculptural installations or audience activated compositions.
WORKS ON LIGHT AND SHADOW ”I am interested in combining natural and artificial light into my works, as well as in darkness and shadows. In my sculptures, installations and other public works of art I study light and space: the way materials reflect light, and how artistic and functional lighting can be combined. The multiple public light pieces and contest propositions I have carried out have neared on environmental lighting planning, with the possibilities of visual arts realised. [When working] in collaboration with architects and other design professionals, art and artistic lighting can form as a natural part of a building, space or urban environment.” Jaakko Niemelä has participated in the Architecture of Light -training schedule in the updating education programme lead by Aalto University's School of Art and Design.
Janne Parviainen is a light artist from Helsinki. His work has been featured in various magazines, books and art blogs such as The National Geographic, The Guardian, Daily Mail, Wired, Juxtapoz, Spiegel Online, Metro Newspaper. Janne has worked with well-known brands such as Adobe Systems Inc., Olight and Nippon Television producing high-level artistic material for commercial use. His work has been on display globally on exhibitions, light art festivals and museums. Janne Parviainen has been working as an art educator for 20 years in different art schools in Finland and arranges light art workshops in Finland and abroad.
Jere Suontausta (b. 1994) is a multidisciplinarily and multisensorially working artist based in Helsinki. In his practice he prefers to embrace both intuition and serendipity, taking often a rather non-rational approach to pottering around with found materials. Suontausta declares his artistic aspire to be pursuing something otherworldly by means of combining familiar and unknown in peculiar ways.
Suontausta graduated as Master of Arts in 2020 from the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki, Degree Programme in Lighting Design.
The base of every piece is the material and its chemical and visual properties. https://johannaalanko.com/
Juan Kasari a MFA from the Academy of fine arts, Time and Space Arts study programme, is a visual artist living and working in Helsinki. His works have recently been shown at Sinne gallery in Helsinki, Photographic gallery Hippolyte and MUU Gallery in Helsinki, Photographic center Peri in Turku, as well as several group exhibitions in Finland and Abroad. The reality around us is composed of random events, probabilities and intentional events. They are all complex phenomena, whether visible or invisible.We as humans exist in a no man’s land between things and meanings. New things and meanings emerge from the process of encounters and events around us. His installation works renders tangible states of isolation, transitoriness and ephemerality. The artworks are large abstract colour surfaces that avoid both the figurative idiom and narrativity. They are also in a constant state of change. The artificial and natural light, the layers of superimposed video projections and the viewer’s presence all play upon the gallery space and the works, giving rise to new changeable meanings. Kasari’s works are based on Mondrian’s idea of pure beauty that is devoid of figurative or narrative content. The projections employ primary colours and their combinations. In his artistic work, Juan Kasari explores the internal tensions of humanity and microcosmoses. His previous major solo shows (Gated Community and Real White Panthers) were about real-life closed communities. In his more recent exhibitions, Kasari’s visual vocabulary has become more abstract, yet addressing the same themes.
Juha Rouhikoski has worked with light since 1994. He is continuously looking for ways to utilize the secret, visible and invisible wavelengths of light.He is currently working on his artistic research PhD in the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.
Jukka Huitila is a working light and video artist, whose projects involve buildings, public spaces, events and performing arts. He is equally at ease working on site specific performances or lighting up massive edifices like the Helsinki Olympic Stadium.
Kari Alonen (b.1953) is a long-standing visual artist from Central Finland who has become known both for his outspoken art and for a new combination of stone, glass and light. Social criticality and humor are weapons with which Kari takes a stand on the grievances he sees. “The partisan of humor beats the army of squares”.
Kari began his career as a civil servant, but he soon found that making art was more appealing than creating a career in an agency. The shortcomings of the system also meant that he did not want to be part of that system. On the contrary, these experiences act as a springboard for his stance-taking art. Eventually, for Kari, the desire to try overcame the fear of failure, and he ended his career as a civil servant to start making art full-time, without any other livelihood. This is how the official became an artist.
KOKIMO is a group of artists, founded in 2010 in Helsinki. All eight KOKIMO members work independently in performing and visual arts, and together as KOKIMO their work is both collaborative and collective. KOKIMO explores the relations between people and their environment, and uses the experiential perceptions gained as a material in their work. In KOKIMO’s pieces, the emphasis is on sensitivity towards the environment, on multisensory experiences, and on an active participant position. The group’s work is both space and site sensitive. Ecological and ethical values are always present in KOKIMO’s work. The light in KOKIMO pieces can be either the existing light, a narally changing light that forms a part of the work, or light created with spotlights. It can also mean limiting the visibility, using darkness as a part of the artwork, or traditional light art. KOKIMO’s work has been seen both in Finland and internationally, and the group’s light art has been exhibited in Helsinki in both LUX Helsinki and the FLASH biennial. KOKIMO’s members are Kristian Ekholm, Markus Heino, Raisa Kilpeläinen, Viljami Lehtonen, Anna Murtola, Veera-Maija Murtola, Anna Pöllänen, and Salla Salin. Kilpeläinen, Murtola, and Pöllänen are responsible for the light art.
Liisi Soroush & Camilo Sanchez; Lasismi: Kaappo Lähdesmäki; Niko Tiainen
Konvolv is a multidisciplinary international new media collective discussing societal, political and environmental complexities. Our collective outcomes deliver interactive, participatory and immersive experiences along with concepts on futuristic scenarios and frameworks. The artistic and design practice is an interplay between speculative, critical and reflective design. We reflect upon and integrate our know-how on digital human rights, embodied / sound and physical interaction, queer media art, decolonization, open society activism, surveillance, power structures, musicology, post- and transhumanism, human-material interaction, new materialism, mediaarcheology, ubicomp, HCI, software engineering, creative coding, machine learning, post-WIMP and rhythmanalysis. As a collective, we strive for observing places, spaces, environments and ambiences unfolding into site and case-specific narratives that incorporate data flows with a meaningful message. Our efforts translate into a variety of site-specific new media art formats connected to local inhabitants; living or nonliving, human or non-human, animals and entities. Whilst examining human-machine collaboration, we aim for explorations through-provoking senses merging into the state of presence.
CONTACT INFORMATION
BLAF Best of Light Art in Finland
is hosted by
Finnish Light Art Society FLASH
2877700-6
LightArtFi
Producer: Annukka Ketola
annukka.ketola@valotaiteenseura.fi
+358 40 735 3972
Curators:
Mia Kivinen / mia.kivinen@valotaiteenseura.fi
Anna Björklund / anna.bjorklund@valotaiteenseura.fi
