House Party<\/p>\n\n\n\n
20.12.2024 Article about group show House Party Featured in Flash Art – online magazine<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/flashart.cz\/2024\/12\/20\/a-party-i-dont-want-to-run-away-from<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The ice has melted. Oh no \u2013 am I too late? There is no one to be seen, no one \u2013 a friend nor a new acquaintance \u2013 greeting me. Yet it seems that a party of sorts is still going on. I hear, see, and feel traces of a hearty and rich atmosphere. And, as is always in the case of a good party, I have heard rumors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this condensed mindset I have entered Kotibileet! (eng. House Party!) exhibition, curated by Anna Jensen and Eliisa Suvanto, at gallery SIC in Helsinki. The rumors that have reached me have to do with Benjamin Orlow\u2019s work Ritual City, a sculptural object made of ice, presented at the opening of the exhibition and already melted at the time of my visit. Luckily, I can find Orlow\u2019s other work, a stoneware and steel-based sculpture right at the door. The sculpture is large and its materiality present in its rusty green and seemingly heavy look. It reminds of something recognizable that now has melted; as something that has been and now has stopped being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kotibileet! is, at the same time, stagnant and in flux. It plays with temporalities, strategies of installation, and different approaches to its theme of house party in insightful ways. The choreography of the exhibition and its multiple architectural strategies of presentation, from works exuding outside of the space \u2013 Hanna Per\u00e4kyl\u00e4\u2019s Common Bond \u2013 to activating the space of SIC fully, blurring the lines between a staff room and the exhibition space. The exhibition brings forward a question of which curatorial methods have been used to succeed in the multiplicity of over-lapping narrations and subjectivities and still leave the viewer with dry yet almost-sweaty hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The exhibition carries many works with it all the way to the point of exhaustion. Still, it seems that this richness of continuing relations between the works is what makes Kotibileet! work so well. Kaija Hinkula\u2019s playful painting installation Play with me (vol. 2), consisting of colorful curtains, a video with swim fins and ball pool, looks at contemporary painting through a critical, performative, and colorful ways. Jade Kallio\u2019s video and broken toilet installation Toilet reminds the visitor of Kallio\u2019s exhibition \u2013 also in SIC \u2013 where a question of biopolitics and personal boundaries collided in sophisticated, straightforward ways. Here recontextualized, the work invites to continue the party in more secretive places. Next to Kallio\u2019s work, Lenka Glisn\u00edkov\u00e1\u2019s introspective and refreshening installation Tomorrows harvest underline the corporeality of forming thoughts in many parallel manners, introducing a more abstract frequency to Kotibileet! Vita Edvards\u2019 moving video installation Fleminginkatu 23 A 25, in which the narrator thoroughly explains relations between objects and people in their immediate surroundings, continuing to change the focus from party to the house; to home and the act of letting someone in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kotibileet! works like a house party: one waits so eagerly to meet someone, only to be disappointed by the fact that object of waiting is not there. Yet, the promise and, almost always, knowledge of something even better showing up attune one\u2019s tentacles in new positions. I leave the show with an invitation letter to a Cryptocurreny pitch meeting during Post-ayahuasca retreat glows \u2013 a work by Edna Huotari to be taken with. It is as if I am cordially invited to come back to the exhibition, as if a memoir of something becoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SIC, Kotibileet!, 7.9.\u201312.10.2024Sarah-Mecca Abdourahman, Maija Fox, Lenka Glisn\u00edkov\u00e1, Kaija Hinkula, Janette Holmstr\u00f6m, Jade Kallio, Viljami Nissi, Nylon-kollektiivi (Vita Edvards, Edna Huotari, Ella Rahkonen), Benjamin Orlow, Hanna Per\u00e4kyl\u00e4, Oskari Ruuska, Enni Vekkeli.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" House Party 20.12.2024 Article about group show House Party Featured in Flash Art – online magazine https:\/\/flashart.cz\/2024\/12\/20\/a-party-i-dont-want-to-run-away-from A party I don\u2019t want to run away from\u00a0by Eero Karjalainen The ice…<\/p>\nA party I don\u2019t want to run away from\u00a0by Eero Karjalainen<\/a><\/h1>\n\n\n\n