Upcoming: Fantastic and Realistic Worlds

Contemporary Finnish comics have blossomed unprecedentedly and have almost acquired a global reputation in the last five years.

The invited artists in Kiasma exhibition include some of the best comics authors in Finland, whose work focuses on the creation of visual and narrative worlds. Although the starting point of the exhibition is the comics album, all artists have found their own way of portraying their comics in three dimensions, or of transplanting the world of the comic or the process of its making into the exhibition context.

In their works, the exhibition artists explore the essence of the comics narrative and the various methods and forms of narrativity. Although the artists are all different, in terms of content they share a tension between everyday reality and a certain surrealism. Many of the artists tell stories that bear a resemblance to their own lives, creating a kind of autobiographical fiction.

Many Finnish comics artists have made a breakthrough in France, yet are relatively unknown in Finland. Finnish art comics are well-known, but mainly abroad. Let’s hope that the coming exhibition will be a means of increasing the recognisability of Finnish comics, of raising the profile of comics as an art form, and also of showing what contemporary comics can achieve as a form of visual art.

The exhibition curators are the comics editors Ville Hänninen and Harri Römpötti, and Kiasma Chief Curator Arja Miller.

Arja Miller
Comics exhibition 9 Mar - 9 Sep 2012