Kunsthalle Seinäjoki announces exhibitions for 2023
In 2023 exhibitions of Kunsthalle Seinäjoki, the themes are connections and continuities. The exhibitions deal with the meanings of maintaining connection and understanding between the different areas of life and people, as well as between history and the present day. The year 2023 begins with group exhibitions of artists working in Finland, while the exhibitions opening in summer and autumn are a continuation of the cooperation between Nordic artists and art institutions. In addition to the earlier published Derby, three new exhibitions are now being announced. The program offers the public something to experience and think about in the unique exhibition spaces of Kunsthalle Seinäjoki.
Art and sport
In January Kunsthalle Seinäjoki becomes a sports hall when art and sports meet at the Derby. The artists of the exhibition are duo Krister Gråhn & Hannamari Matikainen, Anne Lehtelä, Teemu Mäki, Alina Sinivaara, and Maria Stereo. They have collaborated with local sports people or sought inspiration for their works from Seinäjoki’s sports culture. In the exhibition, we will see a new aesthetic interpretation of the traditional skateboard imagery, experience the orienteering forest in a multi-sensory way and wonder if art could also be about team sports like in Finnish baseball. Figure skating takes our thoughts to the ways of being a man, but will there be a cheering heap at the exhibition after the game is over?
Alina Sinivaara’s painting depicts fan culture in football.
On the edge of Trinity
Trinitas opens in the end of February, bringing three artists together. Combining sculptures, photography, and video, the show places images and findings from modern humanity onto a kind of altar. Ville Kirjanen, Aleksi Kolmonen, and Aeon Lux create a rich and storied exhibition in Vintti that agitates the normative gaze at this moment and flirts with the idea of failures within historical continuities.
From a herring factory
Resonance is an international group exhibition previously shown in 2021 at Verksmiðjan á Hjalteyri (the herring factory in Hjalteyri) in Iceland—in a space that resonates with the beautiful barren aesthetics of the old industrial property in Halli space. Awarded with the Icelandic Art Prize 2022 for the best group exhibition in Iceland, the works of five artists are presented—drawing from the world of environment, technology, and storytelling. The artists of the exhibition are Olga Bergmann (IS), Angela Dufresne (US), Anna Hallin (IS), Vesa-Pekka Rannikko (FI), and Simon Rouby (FR). On display are paintings, sculptures, videos, and animation.
Vesa-Pekka Rannikko’s video work at Resonance exhibition.
Blue and black
For her solo exhibition Blue Wood, Black Iron in Vintti space Sigrid Holmwood (SE/GB) has studied the local plant dyeing tradition and peasant culture. She got interested in the blue and black colour that are connected with “körttiläisyys” (a Lutheran revivalist movement in Finland), and which subsequently became the colours symbolising the extreme-right nationalist movements in Finland. In her work, Holmwood investigates the historical connections of dye plants, pigments and other substances used in painting to the various developments of modernization, industrialization and colonialism.
