BACK FOR A MOMENT

BACK FOR A MOMENT

This exhibition takes a retrospective look at the career of Maaria Wirkkala. Spanning four decades, it presents variations of her early works alongside new pieces created for this exhibition.

Maaria Wirkkala is in many respects a pioneer in her aesthetic idiom, her treatment of materials, and her conceptual approach. She weaves together sculpture, installation, video and performativity. Space, light, and time are key themes in her practice.
Maaria creates art around spaces. Her art is rich in dualities such as past/present, presence/absence, light/darkness, transition/permanence, remembering/forgetting, hiding/showing.

All career long she has been exploring the themes of otherness, outsiderness and the impossibility of genuine communication. ”You can only try to understand the other”, the artist says.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated book (Sara Hildén Art Museum Publications 109, Finnish – English). The articles in the book are written by art researcher Hanna Johansson, freelance curator René Block, Art Front Gallery’s artistic director, curator Fram Kitagawa, and museum director emerita Maija Tanninen-Mattila.