Painting by Petri Yrjölä

Sculpture by Riitta Helevä

KEMI.
DAYS RISING

Riitta Helevä – Petri Yrjölä

Kemi Art Museum, Finland

2/3 – 15/4  2012

Petri Yrjölä was nominated to the prestigious Ars Fennica prize in 2009. His topics are often the northern countryside, water, forest and wilderness. Yrjölä has spent his childhood on an island, which has affected his topics. Nature themes are often combined with a mystical dimension. The works are melancholic, magical and romantic. Darkness is present in the world, but it is afraid of light. The color scale is restrained. Yrjölä is working on the embankment of the River Ii, “as part of the forever flowing power.”

“Painting is a journey – an adventure, each time with a possiblility of something entirely new, as a starting point for an idea I had. This game has been going through my life, as long as I can remember.”

Riitta Helevä moves in the landscape and its layers. In a space of timelessness and immateriality, she travels through the world´s soil layers and cavities. Helevä is searching for the appearance of its own immeasurable, indeterminate, accidental, concealed nature. “My home is in the absolute and understated landscape, a calmness which is full of emptiness.”

In recent years, Helevää has used materials like cast bronze, nylon, textiles and birch wood. However, any material can be used, as long as it serves the work contents, including a photograph.

“The time is lost, there is only infinite, silence. It is a strong feeling, that the static and long-standing is present.”