ARS O6. Spaces loaded with emotions

The works in ARS 06 have multilayered meanings, they are surprising and question traditional beauty conventions. Many of the works are charged with emotion or display extreme visual drama that allows for the creation of many new stories.

Kiasma’s major international exhibition will offer a multidimensional interpretation of the ways 21st century art discusses the world around us and presents alternative realities. The central themes of the exhibition are the values and ideals of our time, our ability for good and evil, but also the capacity of art to offer consolation and touching experiences, small wonders.

HOLISTIC EXPERIENCES

The internal dialogue of the exhibition is multilateral. The works discuss our relationship to the history of art by placing today’s events in settings familiar from art history. Traditional crafts, modern technology and media imagery, as well as the interface between natural and artificial, are elements in the works of many of the artists featured.

ARS 06 gives an opportunity to be exposed to varying narratives and ways of expression, through individual worlds of imagery, as well as more comprehensive spatial and sensory experiences. The aim is to compile an exhibition that provides a focused, contro-versial and memorable experience.

Many of the works will open up the possibility to observe miniature worlds and analyse the structures of society. The works of Walter Martin and Paloma Muños turn their gaze inwards, observing closed microworlds. They place scenes from everyday life, joys and sorrows, in snow-covered landscapes. The miniature figures struggle in their ownmisolation, striving to survive as best they can in the difficult circumstances. This series of episodes expands into a wider comment on the moral state of humans, the world that cannot always be controlled with reason. The Spanish American artist couple has made poignant use of the metaphor of eternal winter, particularly familiar to us Finns.

AN ILLUSION OF SPACE

One door to ARS 06 is opened through the work of Polish artist Monika Sosnowska. The point of departure in her art is a person’s relationship to the surrounding space and the physical and mental experiences. Often her works depict a narrowing corridor or a labyrinth ending in a dead end, a series of doors growing smaller, or an illusion created by the perspective of the proportions of space.

Sosnowska adapts, with great insight, elements referring to public spaces and modern architecture to intimate private spaces. The cool appearance of the works hides charged meanings, which the viewers are welcome to interpret based on their own experiences and sensory recollections.

Sosnowska will build a new installation for ARS 06. The artist will arrive in Kiasma in the autumn to get acquainted with thearchitecture of the museum building in order to plan her site-specific project.

Jari-Pekka Vanhala

ARS 06 20 Jan – 27 Aug 2006