Invitation to press event: Joint exhibition by Ars Fennica 2019 candidates opens at Amos Rex

Amos Rex warmly invites the media to a press event for the Ars Fennica 2019 exhibition on Monday 17 June at 11:30 am. Registrations: iia.palovaara@amosrex.fi.

The exhibition, jointly arraged by Amos Rex and Ars Fennica, has been curated by Itha O’Neill, Curator at Amos Rex. Candidates of the award have been nominated by an award panel appointed by the Ars Fennica foundation, with Leena Niemistö as Chair and Museum Directors Leevi Haapala (Kiasma) and Kai Kartio (Amos Rex), and artist Jussi Kivi as members. The decision-maker on the final winner of the award will be announced at the press event. The audience also has the possibility to vote for their favourite during the exhibition. The award winner and visitors' choice will be announced on 21 August 2019.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Ars Fennica foundation publishes a digital exhibition catalogue available for download on its website at arsfennica.fi/en.

Presenting the candidates 

Known for his masterful sunset paintings, Petri Ala-Maunus (b. 1970, based in Helsinki) took on a new approach approximately five years ago, eradicating any trace of humans in his paintings. His works are rugged visions of a world before or after the time of mankind and crafted with meticulous detail. The central piece by Ala-Maunus is the 14-metre History and Utopia of Landscape (2019), created for the exhibition. The end result consists of seven panels and has a fantastical element that makes it almost supernatural.

Miriam Bäckström (b. 1967, based in Stockholm) utilises photography, film, performance, theatre, installation, sculptures as well as text in her art. Constantly seeking new images, experiences and emotions, her works evoke no standard perceptions or responses. The two monumental works of the exhibition will be on display for the first time. Larger of the two textile pieces, the 15-metre long Psychopath cuts the exhibition space like a rocket,

Ragnar Kjartansson (b. 1976, based in Reykjavik) combines different art genres in free form; music is made sculptural, painting becomes performative and film is turned into tableaux vivant. The exhibition’s 2.5-hour video piece The Boat is part of the artist’s nine-part series of works, Scenes from Western Culture. The huge projection captures an epic scene of a speedboat slowly crossing a Swiss lake.

Aurora Reinhard (b. 1975, based in Helsinki) has long been exploring different power and dependency in her art. The work Broken to be displayed in the exhibitionconsists of nine pieces completed in the last years. Reinhard herself also makes an appearance as a model in several pieces of the work. In her works, she explores the (female) artist’s identity, along with different power and dependency relationships.

Egill Sæbjörnsson’s (b. 1973, based in Berlin) fictional friends Ugh and Boogar, the 36-metre tall, coffee-loving and human-eating trolls, became world-famous in Venice Biennale 2017. In the artist’s latest work The Paintings, a spatial artwork with six animated paintings, the trolls make a comeback. They are also featured in The trolls in Hellsinki, a book made for the exhibition by Sæbjörnsson. In the book, the trolls are both fascinated and frightened by the Moomins and end up hosting an exhibition at Amos Rex due to the bar Corona being closed.

Modernist forerunner Birger Carlstedt’s exhibition on display during 11 October 2019 – 12 January 2020

This fall, Amos Rex will present the life’s work of Birger Carlstedt (1907–1975) from the museum’s collections in a large retrospective exhibition. Carlstedt was a Finnish forerunner in Modernism, a pioneer in abstract art and a multi-talented dandy who ventured, in addition to painting, into interior design, design, staging and monumental painting. The exhibition also includes a functional reconstruction of the Le Chat Doré café, which was designed by Carlstedt and operated on Unioninkatu in Helsinki during the prohibition from 1929 onward.

Press:https://amosrex.fi/en/press/