Zetterberg Gallery is delighted to announce that the Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation now holds a remarkable collection of works by Jiri Geller, with 7 significant sculptures by the artist, making it the largest museum collection of the artist’s work.
The collection includes an outstanding selection of sculptures from Geller’s most recognizable work series including the SUGARED-, DUNKELHEIT- and FUCK THE WORLD! – series amongst others.
The Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation has one of the most important collections in private ownership in the Nordic countries with nearly 2,000 works in its collection.
Jiri Geller’s FUCK THE WORLD! – retrospective is currently on show at Serlachius Museum Gösta until April 22nd 2018.
The Turku City Art Collection has acquired Aurora Reinhard´s experimental video work Boygirl, 2002, (12min) as part of their permanent collection.
Boygirl deals with gender and identity issues through interviews of three young females that all have a boyish appearance. Reinhard won the International media art award from ZKM Centre for Art and media Karlsruhe, Germany, for the documentary in 2002.
The work is currently on display at the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum in the exhibition Bodybuilding until January 14th 2018.
Jani Leinonen and Aurora Reinhard are included in the contemporary art exhibition With Seven-league Boots. Stop – Finland, presenting works from the Kiasma Collection at the Art Museum RIGA BOURSE in Riga (Doma laukums 6) from 25 November 2017 to 7 January 2018.
The show is the second exhibition introducing contemporary art collections from the Baltic Sea region’s museums and it is dedicated to the centenaries of the Republic of Finland and the Republic of Latvia.
Nature and imagination meet in Mari Keto’s solo exhibition Super/Natural in November at the Koldinghus Castle in Denmark. Keto transforms Koldinghus’ Ruin Hall into a large-scale installation and invites visitors to engage in a magical and absurd nature landscape where beauty attracts the eye but upon closer observation, reveals unpleasant truths. Keto´s inspiration grows out of her own childhood experiences in the Finnish nature and her observations of the prevailing view of nature in the city where she lives today.
The exhibition opens on November 24th 2017 and runs through April 2nd 2018.
Aurora Reinhard is taking part in the group exhibition Bodybuilding at the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art in Turku, opening on October 20th 2017.
The exhibition brings together works of contemporary art, which explore the body-related conceptions and presentation conventions prevailing in our culture today.
The exhibition runs through 20th October, 2017–14th January, 2018. For more informaion visit: www.wam.fi
”I want to make art that is at once timeless and topical”
The expression of a Smiley is a broad smile always expressing the same overwhelming enthusiasm. A Smiley face expresses joy, encouragement, approval. It symbolises everything positive, although when simplified, the message functions mostly as an encouraging punctuation mark – as such, it is simultaneously the most pointless and the most meaningful in the world.
The three-dimensional, cast-aluminium sculptures of Jiri Geller’s new series have been inspired by the classic Smiley face. Geller continues to present detailed, expertly-crafted sculptures by offering yet another perspective into his conceptual nihilism. The sculptures’ pattern of events that appears to have halted for a fraction of a second is known from Geller’s previous work, and the latest series of works is no exception; the hyper-finalised forms of the sculptures stretch, empty, bubble, splash, move mechanically, and the smiley face gets an ice-cream cone in the eye.
Smiley usage is global, it is a cross-cultural image whose positive message has lived on in different forms, from cave paintings to today’s smart phones. Geller’s sculptures do not, however, depict the smileys that have evolved into emojis, although their ubiquitous presence has played a part in the birth of the work. In written sources, the first symbol interpretable as a smiley can be found already in the 1600s. From then on, different versions are occasionally observed in different sources, although increasingly from the mid-1900s onwards. The classic yellow Smiley face, made famous by popular culture, is based on a symbol developed in the US in 1963, with the aim of encouraging improved achievement among employees of a life-insurance company. This has become part of the standards of today’s working life; employees are given warnings ever more lightly, if they don’t remember to smile enough.
“Remember to smile, it’s nice to look at a smiley face!”
Geller’s chosen topics often consist of objects or situations based on something that has become iconic. Geller sees Smiley as an example of this. Like balloons, skulls, or escalators, they are not located in time, but are simultaneously both topical and timeless.
Jiri Geller (born 1970, resides and works in Helsinki) is known for his highly detailed sculptures that utilise current phenomena in pop culture. Geller has held several notable solo exhibitions around Finland and the Nordic countries, as well as taken part in numerous exhibitions in international art institutions around the world.
Aurora Reinhard is known for her photographs, sculptures, and videos that challenge the structures and tensions of society and depict, in particular, the compulsive expressions of gender and womanhood.
In her solo exhibition Venus, Reinhard is once again striking. The exhibition presents nine interpretations of femininity tinted by the porn industry and pin-up picture, as well as a series of miniature sculptures featuring the artist herself as the model. In keeping with her style, Reinhard manages to embed humor and human warmth in her works, once the provocative first impression has faded.
Aurora Reinhard (1975) lives and works in Helsinki, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts department of Time and Space Art, Helsinki in 2003. Reinhard is known for her video, photographic and sculptural work dealing with themes of gender and sexuality, moving between documentary and surreal approaches. Her works are included in numerous Finnish public and private collections and her sculpture Flowers, 2006 has been widely shown in traveling exhibition The Desire for Freedom (2012-14), originating in the German Historical Museum, Berlin. A large selection of her works were shown in Invisible Lady at Amos Anderson Art Museum, Helsinki (2013), her video Boygirl, 2002 was awarded the international Media Art Award by Zentrum Für Kunst und Media ZKM, Karlsruhe.
