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Painting as a Scene that Shapes the World <\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 on Kaija Hinkula\u2019s Art<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Text: Tarja Pitk\u00e4nen-Walter 2\/2025<\/em>
Fine Arts Academy of Finland Foundation Prize<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I think of the Gardener installation as a metaphor for nurturing and feeding dreams. References to the gardener’s chores, such as caring for imaginary plants and seeds, are a metaphor for the human capacity for imagining a new world. The potential of seedlings and bright fantastical colors symbolize the processes of growing and change, creating a new world and ideas.” (Kaija Hinkula on her exhibition Gardener in 2024)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understanding the great forces of dreaming and imagination are central to Kaija Hinkula\u2019s artistic process. Rather than escapism, she is concerned with awareness of the mutability of reality and challenging this. The artist\u2019s studio and work are a safe haven and a growing place for freedom, living differently, and new points of view. It is especially comforting now that the world is rather topsy-turvy. Hinkula\u2019s fresh gifts to the world take shape there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her works are based on the central elements of painting: colour and composition. However, they are not limited to a traditional, flat format. Of course, the works mostly consist of painted or otherwise coloured surfaces, but also of three-dimensional shapes and ready-made objects. The colours especially lead the exhibition space to merge with the works. Some of Hinkula\u2019s works involve moving images, light, and even performance. The use of light and moving images creates a fresh interpretation of painting as a medium. She talks about crossing the borders of painting and fusing different art forms in moving processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hinkula\u2019s works raise questions and make statements on the expanded potential of painting. First of all, why should a painting be limited to the wall? Hinkula\u2019s Master of Fine Arts thesis project in 2021 did not look like a painting torn down from a wall but rather like the wall was bent and blended with the painting. The painting\u2019s elements also escaped their habitual places in her earlier works in the Builder<\/em> exhibition of 2019. A yellow rectangle ran down the wall and half onto the floor at a sharp angle and aniline spray paint staggered up to the ceiling and turned into a vaporous line. An upside-down box with something resembling a trickle of red paint hanging out of it was placed on the room divider. It was as if Hinkula had turned the rectangular canvas upside down and allowed the contents to run and trickle into the space. She was shaking the abstract geometric minimalism of the modernist tradition into a new shape, an unrestrained and free independence, towards a \u2018fantastical minimalism\u2019 as she herself defines her current work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The names of Hinkula\u2019s exhibitions evoke painting as a verb, an action:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Builder <\/em>(2019), Play<\/em> (2022), Stargazer <\/em>(2023), and Gardener <\/em>(2024). An important pointer is also Democracy <\/em>(2024), a public installation for the Oulu City Hall. In the site-specific painting installation in the lobby of the city council, the central elements of decision-making, the Finnish words JAA and EI, as well as the president\u2019s mallet, are interpreted in two- and three-dimensional assemblages of colours, forms, spatial compositions, and textures. The viewer recognises the multi-sensory representation of the elements of power, absolute in themselves, as human and humoristic, and their weight seems fickle. The \u2018aesthetic activism\u2019 of the installation freshens up the public image of the city hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Hinkula\u2019s work shifting places, observations, or materials out of context and changing them into new shapes, spaces, or actions is central. For example, in her video performance Baking for my Lover<\/em> (2023) the colourful stress balls turn into swelling and bubbling dough in the artist\u2019s more or less gentle hands, commenting on the nature of the relationship. Meanwhile, the nature of painting is freed from the expectation of a fixed object and the requirement of paint applied with a brush. It wears different materials, merges with day to day life, societal institutions and colours, and changes their nature as well as that of the art. In taking a step forward and into the future, by redefining painting, Hinkula\u2019s works are also related to the functions of painting from hundreds and thousands of years ago, breaking the restrictions of the canvas, and to the everyday decorative painting of walls \u2014 the need to uplift and entertain, to make the power of visual pleasure a part of environment and life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kaija Hinkula studied art at the Liminka Art School and the South Karelia University of Applied Sciences. She graduated as a Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her earlier work, the painterly gestures often turned and twisted the basic geometric forms and searched for their place in the space. In recent years, they have blossomed into a rich and distinctive flower. In her exhibitions Stargazer<\/em> and Gardener,<\/em> the layering of paint typical to traditional painting is reconstructed as concrete boards with holes in them, through which different things peer, hang, pour, drop, and even claw. These wild yet upright paintings step out of their frames and open up as the colour on the wall behind them and onto the floor as assemblages of objects; a scene. The paintings become cheerful situations and temptingly straightforward agents that call the viewer to join them: Play with me<\/em>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Usually, as we grow up, we lose play and the spontaneous interpretation and understanding of reality. Kaija Hinkula\u2019s playfulness enlivens the viewer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is painting as a practical site for shaping reality par excellence!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About nurturing and caring for real and imaginary gardens \u2013 the abundance of dreams, pleasure and play<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Text: Anna Jensen 6\/2024<\/em>
Gardener, Kaija Hinkula, Turku Art Hall<\/em>

The garden always bursts into splendour. After a harsh winter, the snow melts and through the black
soil, stalks of green emerge. Flowers burst from the buds, their brilliance attracting wildlife,
pollinators, glittering beetles and bees in fluffy striped suits. The pollen spreads on their tiny feet,
the plants fertilise, multiply, prepare to rise again, attracted by the sun, through the clammy soil,
lush, fragrant, colourful, generous.

But a garden does not bloom alone, it needs a gardener to help it. A gardener tends, waters, weeds,
turns. Imagines, dreams, plans, and then plants, grows and finally collects. The gardener digs,
cultivates and knows his plants, his soil and his actions, but also the feelings that arise from them.
Aided by myriad tools, jugs, gloves, objects unrecognizable but attractive to one that doesn\u2019t
know gardening Now, as part of Hinkula’s work, these tools both refer to their purpose and become
an entirely new, purely aesthetic material. The distinction between the real and the invented narrows
and the spectrum of forms of living expands. With gardening, the relationship with the land, and
thus with the earth, becomes concrete and tangible, while on the other hand, the utopian dimensions
of the relationship with the world rise to the surface.

A garden is a vision, a paradise and a dream. It is the creation of its gardener, but also the result of
chance, of exposure to circumstances and system that operates under the conditions of the many
different powers. The garden is a fiction that becomes reality as the seeds begin to sprout. The
garden is a world of opposites, where the inevitability of death meets the miracle of rebirth, new
and repetitive, endlessly repeated and requiring repetition. The garden is a demarcation between
chaos and order, work and care, and a place for play, where shapes and colours are in constant flux
as the world around them changes.

Kaija Hinkula’s Gardener extends this serious play into the realm of visual art. Borrowing from the
aesthetics of gardens and yards and utilizing green plant care supplies, the works foster curiosity
and playfulness, building a world of their own that surprises, amuses and delights. Hinkula’s garden
serves as a metaphor for the human capacity to evolve and imagine a new kind of world. By nurturing
the garden, we nurture playfulness and imagination, we enjoy change, new possibilities,
anticipation of the future. Tending a garden is proof that there is a tomorrow.

Gardens are associated with expectation, wild exuberance, beauty and horror: the potential for
blossoming and decay, the sweetness of berries and the worms and scavengers that burrow in the
soil. But the tenderly gardening carer is also a orchardist, a despotic garden’s ruler, weeding out the
unwanted, peeling and digging with sharp claws, puncturing the soil and fruit surface, poisoning
and rotting in his compost. The garden is a paradise, but in paradise there may lurk a snake, or
someone who peers between the layers of a painting or pokes his paws through the ornamentation
that pierces the surface.

Gardens combine dreaming and realism: imagination meets soil, air, sun, water and the gardener’s
gentle hands to produce shoots and seedlings from the material form of dreaming. The garden is a
complex, symbiotic system of its own, and as a phenomenon full of contradictions: work and
pleasure, lazing in the shade and sweaty toil, privilege and duty. Gardening is pleasure and sweat
and dirt, real and metaphoric: when Voltaire writes at the end of Candide that ‘One must cultivate
one’s own garden’, it is not just a question of growing plants, but of creating one’s own world,
developing aesthetic understanding and nurturing one’s own vision and curiosity.

The gardener defends the garden, cultivates it, nurtures its constant change and renewal. Like
making art, gardening is work, but it is also play. It takes place between the tangible and the
material and the what is in the state of becoming imagined, still to come. It is a matter of making
something into something that is, of giving birth: artists and gardeners imagine the world to come
for others. The work of the artist and the gardener is to fill what is not yet there with what is
imagined and to give it to others to live, to experience, to enjoy, to taste, to see.

Curiosity, experimentation, play, colour, and the extension of painting into the undefined are central
to Kaija Hinkula’s work. The works are spatial, sculptural, videos, ensembles, observations,
suggestions, and questions. They materialize joy and give it physical forms, making visible that
pleasure and humor are not trivial, but have a subversive power. Painting is a garden of possibilities,
where different genres intersect and give birth to the unprecedented. Hinkula’s exhibition
contributes to the current discourse on gardens, extending it from literature to visual art. Where
Olivia Laing, in her latest work The Garden Against Time, describes gardens as havens of safety,
fertile paradises and places of secrets and possibilities, but also of exclusion and privilege, and
Sheila Heti, in Pure Colour, describes how, after the world’s first draft, a flourishing garden sprouts
everywhere, “The entire earth will be a garden sprouting forth, opening with the sun and closing
with the moon, and the plants will not remember how we cut them in the first draft. “, Hinkula
ponders the question through colour and form. The beauty of this is that the viewer can experience
thinking spatially and physically, entering the garden of works.

Anna Jensen<\/em>
Jensen (DA) is a Helsinki-based curator, researcher and writer who fell head over heels in love with
Hinkula’s works at first encounter, and this love has been deepening ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Stargazer<\/strong>
Text: Ph.D. Juha-Heikki Tihinen<\/em> 1\/2023<\/em>
<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The solo exhibition of Kaija Hinkula, Stargazer,<\/em> in the HAM Gallery presents new sides of the artist\u2019s boundary-breaking expression.
In recent years, Kaija Hinkula has repeatedly expanded the possibilities of painting by creating works that could be seen as spatial interventions, such as those presented in Forum Box (2021) or the Oulu Museum Of Art (2022). In these both, the artist created a reinterpretation of the exhibition space with her installations. Hinkula can also surprise the audience, for example by bringing the aesthetics of construction site into the gallery room, as in Gallery Harmaja in Oulu in 2019. Hinkula\u2019s newest exhibition, Stargazer<\/em>, remains within the HAM Gallery, but now she will recreate the painting object.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The works exhibited in Stargazer <\/em>are, in the artist\u2019s own words, \u2018modelling manuals for a new universe\u2019. The artist has also described her previous artistic vision by stating that \u2018my works are centred around displacing a place, an observation or a material from its context and transforming it into a new shape, space and action.\u2019 But what does this mean in practice? In her new works, the artist has laser-cut holes in a painting canvas. The works may feature fake braids or thread as well as ceramic miniature sculptures hanging from the canvas. Hinkula\u2019s exhibition will reach its final form in the gallery space as the works are hung, but the space will feature works of different kinds, moving somewhere between paintings and sculptures, which could be described by using the artist\u2019s own expression, fantastic minimalism<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is fantastic minimalism<\/em>? It is \u2013 naturally \u2013 imaginative and colourful, but it can be just as well characterised by minimalistic monochrome tones and disciplined language of form. Hinkula blends different worlds together in uninhibited ways creating playfull fantasies, so the severity or restraint often linked to minimalism is not present here. Readymade and handmade as well as two-dimensional and three-dimensional are both contradictions that the artist combines together one work at a time. This time, spatiality is present inside the paintings, where audience can peek into, thanks to the holes cut in the surface. On one hand, Hinkula\u2019s works bring to mind parallels to cubistic ideas or Brazilian concretism of the 1910s, but they also seem to fit well in this time and place while also reaching towards the future sci-fi aesthetics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hinkula\u2019s material world is opulent, as she supplements the traditional painting pigments with a wide range of other materials. In the works of Stargazer<\/em>, she has also used MDF, alkyds, spray paint, fabric, nylon, polyester thread, ceramics, a globe and metal pipes. Recently, the artist has also become interested in moving pictures, which will open up new possibilities for her in the future. Hinkula\u2019s work process is characterised by multi-temporality and multi-materiality, which she applies to explore the possibilities offered by different forms of work or their different presentation methods. Or, as the artist herself expresses her current way of thinking: \u2018I have been thinking about futures. I have been thinking about new logics \u2013 and methods for a circle.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the artist asks if it would be possible to imagine alternative realities and word orders, the answer is yes. And she proves this through her works and exhibitions, showing how art is always a form or dissidence and rethinking. Hinkula takes her audience into an experience that reveals surprising directions and views. She does not offer a static style or expression, but rather shows the fantasty-like views born in her studio. Hinkula\u2019s workspace does not have a chair, because the artist never remains still and is always in motion. The same applies to her art, described as \u2018malleable geometry\u2019 or a \u2018place between realities\u2019. Stargazer<\/em> \u00e0 la Kaija Hinkula takes the viewer to galaxies far, far away, simply by sight. This, if anything, is fantastic minimalism<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Material World<\/strong>
On the work of Henna Aho and Kaija Hinkula<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

An essay by curator and writer Jurriaan Benschop
for the exhibition Material World \/ Henna Aho & Kaija Hinkula, Monumentaal Gallery, Tartu Art Hall 2024<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entering this exhibition may give the impression of stepping into a different world, where the
logic of daily life is replaced by another order. It is a material world: There are no people
depicted here, the presence of objects in the room sets the tone, and what catches the attention
first are the colors and surfaces. Yet, on closer inspection, the materials that make up the
artworks are related to daily life, and are in that sense familiar. We see things that we know, or
even that we use in domestic settings, such as a brush, some rope, or gloves. Yet these objects
come in a different setup, thus losing their previous meaning and usefulness. What is it that they
want to say?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two artists, who have been cooperating since their painting studies at the Academy of Fine
Arts in Helsinki, lead us into a world in which the direct response to objects and their
characteristics comes first. There is no storyline or theme to start with, but just the things as
they are. The artists\u2019 approach is material, not materialistic, even though the value of things and
materials, and the economy of attraction, is something to think about with this ensemble. There
are forces at play: The objects may invite us to come closer and enjoy their beauty, or they push
back, like a thorny plant. Henna Aho\u2019s works have rough and irregular surfaces, the result of her
technique of weaving and collaging different materials and objects together. Kaija Hinkula
presents smooth surfaces of plastic, metal, or polished MDF. Where Aho reaches us through
texture, appealing to a sense of touch, Hinkula speaks through color, the way it affects the mind
and defines the atmosphere in a room. What are the artists\u2019 underlying motivations?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years Hinkula has been attracted to the notion of art as a utopian possibility. Fantasy is
key to her approach; using fantasy in her art, she sees the potential to turn things around,
intensify their appearance through color and play, while pronouncing their form through a
process of reduction. Her interest in color ties her to the medium of painting, yet she does not
feel that painting is reserved only for the format of a rectangle on the wall. It can appear in many
forms, and stretch into space. A minimal, quite strict director’s hand is visible in the works, which
gives them an immediate clarity. Then, layers, contrasts, and color combinations give further
meaning or reasons to keep looking. Hinkula\u2019s art is meant to create an environment that is a
welcoming place to spend time. She has used the metaphor of a gardener to describe the artist
\u2013 things need to grow and be taken care of, weeds removed. The environments she creates are<\/p>\n\n\n\n

well organized, balanced, but they are not just pretty and carefree. There is occasional friction,
discomfort, or dirt. A green glove with black fingernails peels an orange mandarin. It is a biting
image. Sharp hooks come out of a painting. Playfulness and some darker details are both part
of the mix, and this is how the works build up tension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Aho, the drive to make work is not so much to create a different world, but rather to tame
the monsters that the current world (or, also, we ourselves) inhabit. On large canvases, partially
painted, she mounts woven patches in threads of different colors, also including objects such as
a paintbrush, a toothbrush, a socket strip, or straps used to secure luggage, all tied together in
an abstract composition. \u03a4he first impression is that of a painting on the wall, but Aho also
considers painting an open field that can develop into three-dimensional or sculptural pieces.
Where traditionally the canvas functions as a neutral support upon which the paint performs the
main role, here the very fabric and its structure become a motif and compositional element.
More than the brushwork, it is the weaving that creates the signature. Some woven areas are
tight and organized, while others contain a lot of loose ends, looking like a messy haircut. The
artist seems to be searching for a balance between elements that are solely formal and
painterly, and ingredients that have a concrete relationship with her everyday surroundings.
Making art is about connecting the abstract world of form with the practical, physical facts of life.
The wish to intensify aspects of life by focusing on materiality and taking elements out of their
daily use, seems to be at the heart of both Aho\u2019s and Hinkula\u2019s practice. Yet Aho\u2019s approach is
in some ways contrary to Hinkula\u2019s. It starts from facing the tense parts of life, sensing a
shadow world that feels threatening. It may be boiling under the surface, but it can easily
manifest in the open. The works could be considered as a kind of cover to counteract this
shadow world and block unwanted things from coming out, like keeping the lid on Pandora\u2019s
box. They offer a solid patchwork, with different kinds of weave and expression. Hinkula sets out
to create an ideal environment instead, a proposition for harmony, and then disruptive elements
seep through, small details that can disturb the order. Both artists work in a vocabulary that is
mainly abstract and open-ended as to what the forms exactly depict or mean. They keep their
distance to storytelling, although with the titles, a metaphor might come into play, like that of the
garden. Through the abstract quality of their works, the two artists are good exhibition partners;
they operate on a similar wavelength, even though their aesthetics are quite different.
Aho\u2019s studio is clean and organized, located in a new house in the outskirts of Turku. The artist
prefers to work in an environment with little visual distraction. In an orderly setting, she makes<\/p>\n\n\n\n

work that can be spontaneous, messy, bold, or overwhelming in its material exuberance. In
Hinkula\u2019s case, it seems to be the other way around. Her studio is in an old military complex, a
crumbling building just outside the city of Oulu. Spare parts of her works are spread over the
floor, and older works are pushed to the side. Within that messy space, Hinkula makes works
that are clean in appearance, stripped from superfluous baggage, and precise in their reduced
form. The respective work conditions underline how art does not necessarily depict the artist\u2019s
life situation or character, but rather responds to or transforms reality as it is perceived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The point both artists seem to focus on is not just to bring us close to the materials, but to
heighten our attention on things around us to such an extent that they come alive and seem
more than just inanimate objects. Once you tune in to the qualities of the material world, and
how objects can relate to each other, the perspective tends to open up. Objects behave not
unlike human beings, each with their own characteristics, sharp or smooth, cold or warm. In the
end, it is not decisive whether the result is painting or another medium, whether the materials
are cheap or sophisticated, whether the works are in a minimal or baroque vocabulary. What
counts is that the works contain the right mix of forces to come alive, and that visitors can relate
to them, almost as if they were meeting a person. If that happens, the materials transcend
themselves. What seems to be the surface is just the skin of further life underneath.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the almost-apparent paintings of<\/strong> Henna Aho and Kaija Hinkula<\/strong> An essay by Eero Karjalainen (FI)<\/em>
for the exhibition Under Conditions \/ Henna Aho & Kaija Hinkula<\/em>, 2023<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Painting as a medium carries a heavy history with itself. As the most studied but also the most sold \u2013 and probably most produced \u2013 art form, a burden, according to many artists and art historians, has cast itself on the medium. How can one say anything about painting, if so much has already been made and stated? It is safe to say that painting has reached a kind of oxymoron: it\u2019s role in museums and text-book examples is solid, but in the infrastructures of contemporary art it is not always taken as given \u2013 it is not too visible. The paradox lies in this notion of visibility since a change in the reception of painting has become apparent, having time to spread its roots. It is not, anymore, interesting to recognize something as a painting; the focus has rather shifted to the medium as an area of artistic operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Above stated is the main historical and methodological frame in which Henna Aho\u2019s and Kaija Hinkula\u2019s new duo exhibition Under the Conditions at KCCC settles. It also the only settling that takes place in the exhibition, which is constantly in movement. Comprised of new works from both painters, the movement could be described as a kind of double-choreography: that of the artists with the space, and of the visitor in the space. This is not to emphasize a sense theatricality, but to point to the stage-like essence in the way the exhibition is constructed. There is an active relation to this world in the exhibition, but it operates like a game with its own set of rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What could be the rules, then? The space is the first dimension \u2013 concretely and conceptually \u2013 to consider. Tactful and precise attitude towards an exhibition space has been important for both Aho and Hinkula in their practices and previous exhibitions, but in Under the Conditions a notion of site-specificity is taken further. The space, as the artists have stated, is the third agency participating in making the exhibition, and spatial intervention is the main starting point for Aho and Hinkula. It is still not meaningful to place the works in this exhibition to a certain category of site-specific art, since different categories of site-specificity \u2013 phenomenological, discursive, or institutional, to name a few \u2013 are constantly getting mixed and blurred. I would rather speak of performative site- and situation-specificity, where performativity points to a number of directions: conceptualizing the exhibition, building it with in part materials found in the location, or visitors engaging with the works. Could even this text be seen as an extension for the question of what site-specific painting is?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The artists engage with the space through the artworks in a multitude of ways. After thinking about the space, the urgent question, arising from the title of the exhibition, is that of what are the conditions under which the artists operate. Aho and Hinkula have both experimented at the borders of painting (un)systematically \u2013 one should not argue that they stretch the borders, since the borders know no limits. For example, ready-made objects, which are a seminal part of the artists working habitudes, are re-contextualized in the works. This happens by relocating the ready-made objects to the area of painting, but without them losing their relation to everyday realm. The usage of ready-made objects in the paintings is taken so far that it is not clear where the work starts and where it ends. Is the monitor presenting a video work physically essential part of the work? Or the heater, around which a site-specific painting is built? In the exhibition even painted colors have a ready-made -character to them, as they are chosen by color code rather than by mixing or experimenting. The burdensome history of painting is thus faded, only to emphasize the fact that it is first and foremost painting that is being considered here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, there is nothing mystical in Under the Conditions. The references to this world are so direct that it is actually difficult to name them as just references. The works in the exhibition approach painting as a medium in painterly conditions. The rules applied are, thus, strict and loose at the same time: working-in and thinking-with painting, moving as far and as close as possible, and preferably at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Painting as a ball game, shopping cart, and vent pipe<\/strong>
An essay by Helsinki-based art critic Eero Karjalainen (FI), published in Finnish Painters 6\/2023<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes on the fun of space and place in the paintings of Elina Autio, Kaija Hinkula, and Lasse Juuti<\/em>

For the last two and a half years, I have more or less actively thought about humour in the paintings of Elina Autio, Kaija Hinkula, and Lasse Juuti. The artistic practices of the three Finnish painters have never really left my mind; whenever I think about contemporary painting, I remember the joyous strategies with which Autio, Hinkula, and Juuti approach the inevitable problems of working in the field called painting. <\/em>For me, paintings, or painterly objects-in-space, by Autio, Hinkula, and Juuti articulate a nonchalant yet earnest relation to the sometimes-insurmountable history of (especially western) painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The three artists dealt with here seem to represent an important set of routes as an answer to an argument posed by many critics and theoreticians (following Eug\u00e8ne Delacroix), namely that what has already been said about painting is not enough<\/em>. This assertion points to the fact that even though so much has been said and written about painting within art history and theory, it still seems that there are problems or questions \u2013 both theoretical and technical \u2013 about painting as a medium in an unsolved state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These three painters work with different concepts and ideas, yet elements of humour connect their work. Their work is often also characterised in writing as \u201cfunny\u201d or \u201cwitty\u201d. That is also where my eagerness toward Autio, Hinkula, and Juuti spans from. What is their relation to painting, and why \u2013 not forgetting how \u2013 <\/em>is <\/em>this relation funny?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Different materials, different discourses<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Walking in a <\/em>gallery space, one encounters a setting that reminds of a post-storm view. A turquoise shopping cart on its nose; banana peel and face mask thrown around and landed on a purple canvas; even a fire hose in a messy pile. Spending a summer day in the architecturally interesting Meri-Rastila, one notices two colourful anomalies in the somewhat grey surroundings: round-shaped canvases filling two formal openings on the fa\u00e7ade of an apartment building. \u201cThis is painting\u201d<\/em> is hardly the first note one makes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kaija Hinkula<\/a> is an artist who comments serious, formalist questions about painting with holistic fun from beginning to end: sometimes the most serious questions can best be addressed with humour. Her work is characterised by the usage of ready-made objects, a plastic finish, and site-specificity, amongst others. Her work plays with the idea that painting has to, in one way or another, behave like a painting to be considered as such. Hinkula\u2019s exhibitions and installations, such as the ones described above in Forum Box (2021) and Pori Biennale (2022), take up many strategies from language. The work is motivated by discursive intentions rather than focusing on things such as surfaces or even paint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hinkula\u2019s work has often been characterised as being in and defined by the \u2018expanded field\u2019 of painting \u2013 for example, as something moving between painting and sculpture. Not disagreeing with this, I would go further and highlight the painterly components and propose that Hinkula\u2019s practice moves medium-specifically in the field of painting. She does this first and foremost through the act of deconstructing the traditional elements of painting and presenting them in new, context-sensitive ways \u2013 be it public intervention or site-specific installation. Her work always seems to offer a whole idea rather than exhibiting specific or small details. It is not to say that what we see in her works is random; on the contrary: the assemblages are carefully constructed. The painterly praxis of Hinkula presents new possibilities to react to painting as a moving, happy medium. When one places her work in the field of painting, and the everyday mess gets mixed with careful constructions of discourse, the reaction is like the best of jokes \u2013 taking its time but ending up with a deep laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If one thinks about paintings where the setting is flipped \u2013 where laughter precedes contemplation \u2013 the work of Lasse Juuti<\/a> comes quickly to mind. Juuti\u2019s paintings have been gradually coming off the wall only to end up back on it again \u2013 or even becoming the wall itself, as in his installation at M\u00e4ntt\u00e4 Art Festival (2022). In his practice, Juuti uses contradictory and indefinite objects and large forms and shapes to activate the viewer, both bodily and intellectually, in this order. There is an exhilarating sensation of childlike awe when one is in the space with Juuti\u2019s work. Finding familiar objects or realising that something actually belongs to the work itself is part of a language of painting that builds primarily on the materiality of the components. For example, the ready-made objects used \u2013 takeaway coffee cups (a recurring theme) or table tennis balls \u2013 gather new meanings for their context is so radically altered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first, it seems his paintings have an unclear nature, but by building his own world through the lack of sharp clarity, Juuti operates via a unique and self-sustaining language. Juuti\u2019s paintings look as if they are made by hand without too much attention to minimal details, thus actively joking about the manly tradition of big paintings in an exhibition space. Still, there is not a lack of colour or experimentation of shape. There is a character of fooling or gaming in the work. That is visible in many of Juuti\u2019s paintings, for example, in Collector\u2019s Green <\/em>(2021), a large painting depicting a distorted tennis field or pool table, sports associated with a certain grandeur. The work, presented in Helsinki Contemporary in 2021, reacts to both the gallery and the exhibition\u2019s viewers in a harmless, laughable way. Collector\u2019s Green<\/em> aptly shows how Juuti works with materials in a way where the painted canvas is always present but always shaped anew, associated and connected with something that can\u2019t quite be put into language. Like Hinkula, Juuti\u2019s work also has a discursiveness to it. It builds on a tension between the materiality of canvas and paint \u2013 always moving towards the conceptualisation of painting but never reaching, or even trying to reach, it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Hinkula\u2019s humour relies on discourse and Juuti\u2019s on materiality, Elina Autio<\/a> is an artist whose work is located somewhere in the middle. An interplay of colour, form \u2013 mainly by modified and shaped stretchers \u2013 and ways of mounting, Autio\u2019s work activates the viewer to think about what a painting is and how it can be defined. Through minor, subtle gestures, Autio turns the accustomed viewing situation into a new position and builds restrictedly on the moment of watching. For the last few years, Autio has worked with traditional qualities of presenting painting; when the work \u2013 the singular painting \u2013 is not hung on the wall, it usually rests against it. She has also repeatedly researched the use of colour and angular shape of painting, as in the works seen in Kunsthalle Helsinki (2019) or tm\u00b7gallery (2021). In both exhibitions mentioned, a gesture of transition was present, from one architectural space to another, from inside to outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Autio moves in the field of historical painterly narratives, commenting abstraction and colour theories. In her earlier work, such as Pipework<\/em> (2013), seen in the exhibition Elements <\/em>(2015) at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, a reference to building infrastructures is also present, as in the later work, but in a more concrete way. The mentioned work consists of spray-painted cardboard-made ventilation pipes, provoking the viewer to pose questions about the placement of these components in buildings and architectural environments. The transitional nature of the work is present in the movement between a building and the idea of a building. Besides this, the work also has a suspending quality, encouraging the viewer to stop and look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Autio can be seen as organising a play where the viewer needs to actively move from looking at the painting in a traditional manner to examining the materials and connecting all of this to the surroundings \u2013 both the actual space and the space of painting as a medium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Endnote: painting is free<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Looking at Finnish painting of the 21st century, one notices that the boundaries of painting have become counter-restrictive. So much about painting has already been said that a space of freedom has made itself apparent. This is exactly where Autio, Hinkula, and Juuti work \u2013 by moving actively between questions about painting as a medium and a space of having fun. The argument seems blunt at first but in the sphere of contemporary painting it appears radical: the painting itself seems free. <\/em>The humorous nature in the work is essentially connected to the medium of painting through the implementation of ironic, affective, and colourful strategies.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boulder Star<\/strong>
Kur\u00e1tor a autor textu \/ Curator and author of the text: Krist\u00fdna \u0158eh\u00e1\u010dkov\u00e1 P\u0159eklad \/ Translation: Eva Galovi\u010dov\u00e1 Dubov\u00e1<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finnish artist Kaija Hinkula let the audience enter a new world: utopian visions inspired by a disappearing underwater universe.
The inspiration for the site-specific installation Boulder Star made for the Pragovka Gallery was the artist\u2019s own fantasy
world, created in her head in her studio. By bringing the installation in the gallery, the piece takes on its final form becoming
a space for the play and imagination of the audience. In her own words, Hinkula gives the audience a manual for modelling and
understanding a new universe, according to which their own world may or may not arise.

Kaija Hinkula\u2019s artistic work includes the expanded painting, where a spatial intervention is created with the distinctive qualities of painting such as color and composition. She explores the spatiality of painting and its expanded materiality. According to artist and art theorist Mark Titmarsch, expanded painting can be viewed as a free game with painting inspired by Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein
and his notion of a game. While Wittgenstein considers speech a game, Titmarsch applies this principle to painting. Just like
the free play is allowed in tennis despite the rules given, the basic set of conditions that determine a painting can be deliberately
omitted, and in contrast other elements, such as videos, fabrics, threads, ceramic objects, colored plates and other materials
can be added.

Formally, references to the minimalism of 1960\u2019s can be traced in Hinkula\u2019s work. However, the austerity and restraint
associated with minimalism is absent in her work which can be labeled as fantastic minimalism in the author\u2019s own words. The
term was coined with some exaggeration while preparing for her previous installation Stargazer in the HAM Gallery, Helsinki, with
art historian Juha-Heikki Tihinen to describe her current work. Although she is minimalist in the use of monochromatic colour tones
and discipline of a form, Hinkula\u2019s work is also playful, colourful, fantastical and organic in its shapes.

The world presented here feels organic, inviting the viewer into the sea to watch the coral reefs. In English, Boulder Star refers to an endangered species of coral. The created environment is a visual inspiration for the artist\u2019s utopian visions in the first place, nevertheless, environmental aspects of her work emerge too, as she creates a fantasy world out of items that may soon no longer be part of the world as we know it today.

Hinkula\u2019s work is also characterized by recycling and repetition of elements, materials and colors. The finalization of
the work took place directly in the gallery where individual elements acquired new connotations and meanings both from the
artist\u2019s and from the viewer\u2019s perspectives. The created worlds allude to Hinkula\u2019s previous installations, which this exhibition follows up on bringing the installation to other levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kaija Hinkula (b. 1984) holds a master\u2019s degree in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki and the Saimaa University of Applied Sciences in Finland. Her works are represented in the collections of the Helsinki Art Museum(HAM), Oulu Art Museum and The Finish
State Art Collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


<\/p>\n\n\n\n



<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Painting as a Scene that Shapes the World \u2014 on Kaija Hinkula\u2019s Art Text: Tarja Pitk\u00e4nen-Walter 2\/2025 Fine Arts Academy of Finland Foundation Prize “I think of the Gardener installation…<\/p>\n

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