Borders and Beyond15. October, 2009 - 22. November, 2009
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Christiaan Bastiaans, Spirit Child, 2002, video DVD
Christiaan Bastiaans (b. 1951) is an artist who investigates the human condition in his work. To understand human existence, Bastiaans searches out situations and places where life meets death and beauty meets horror. The child in the video work Spirit Child seems to embody corruption, innocence and serenity, all at the same time.
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Botto & Bruno, Waiting for the Promised Land, 2008, installation
According to the artist duo Botto & Bruno (b. 1963 and 1966), one can find real life only in the outskirts of cities, because it is there that the important issues and problems of contemporary life are born. The installation covered by hand-made collages reflect urban 'non-places', industrial districts and suburbs and their subcultures.
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Breda Beban, The Most Beautiful Woman in Cucha, 2006, film
Breda Beban's (b. 1952) video installation The Most Beautiful Woman in Gucha captures an erotically charged encounter with a belly dancer and a young man at a festival of Gypsy music in Serbia. Beban's works blend fiction with documentary, moving around the edges of politics, geography and great love stories. They depict events when power is momentarily dislocated.
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Teesejä yhteiskuntaruumiista (Varjot) - Theses on the Body Politic (Shadows)
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Job Koelewijn, Mandala, 2009, installation
The works of Job Koelewijn (b. 1962) could be described as social sculptures in which the conceptual meets with tangibility. Koelewijn likes to combine poetry and texts with visuality, and to use materials that appeal to our sense of touch, smell and taste. The laborious work Mandala in the Kunsthalle is a colourful, metaphysical symbol of the cosmos. -
Maja Bajevic, Le Voyage, 2006, video
Le Voyage, a video installation by the Bosnian-French artist Maja Bajevic (b. 1967), follows a journey of migration from Morocco to Europe. The shaky picture of the hand-held camera is mixed with short shots of the film Casablanca with Arabian subtitles.
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Paola Pivi, Untitled, 2009, drawing, 10x1 m
Paola Pivi (b. 1971) puts familiar objects into unusual contexts, and confuses the viewers by putting them into unforeseeable situations, thus challenging cultural and social customs. Pivi's brand new work in the Kunsthalle is a ten-metre-long drawing that depicts an aircraft and its passangers, turned upside down. -
Via Lewandowsky, What a Pity (Verbrenne, an was du glaubt hast, und glaube an das, was du verbrannt hast), 2009, installation
Via Lewandowsky (b. 1963) works in a conceptual and often site-specific way. One of the themes of Lewandowsky's work is a critical examinations of the history of Germany. Currently he focuses on the world of art and of museums, and the tradition of presentation associated with them. Its message is one of disappearance, lack and breaking conventional boundaries. -
Ulospääsy tästä kuvasta - Sortir de cette image - 2009
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Kunsthalle Helsinki brings the hottest contemporary artists in Continental Europe to Finland. Maja Bajevic, Breda Beban, Botto e Bruno, Christiaan Bastiaans, Via Lewandowsky and Paola Pivi are all artists whose work has amazed audiences at the Venice Biennale in recent years, and whose work has not been presented in Finland before.
Maja Bajevic (Bosnia/France), Christiaan Bastiaans (Holland), Breda Beban (Serbia/Great Britain), Botto e Bruno (Italy), Kalle Hamm (Finland), IC-98 (Finland), Dzamil Kamanger (Iran/Finland), Job Koelewijn (Holland), Via Lewandowsky (Germany), Ayumi Matsuzaka (Japan/Germany), Paola Pivi (Italy), Anu Pennanen (Finland/Germany/France), Ulf Rollof (Sweden), Piia Salmi (Finland), Johannes Vogl (Germany).
Concrete and psychological, real and imaginary limits are stretched as artists from all over Europe test the rules and restrictions imposed by society, while also pushing their own boundaries. Most of the artists featured in the exhibition live and work in different cultures, outside their native country. Many have personal and even dramatic experiences of changes that are taking place in our continent, experiences that are filtered and distilled into powerful and sensitive works of art.
Work to be featured in the exhibition will take art to the end of construction cranes, into syringes; national identities will be thrown into the washing machine. The works are either entirely new or previously unseen in Finland, and will include installations, videos and audio works. The stories, dreams and future visions of contemporary Europe presented in the show will explore how meanings shift when borders change.
The curators of the exhibition are art historian, Professor Agnes Kohlmeyer from the Faculty of Design and Arts of the IUAV University in Venice, and Director of Kunsthalle Helsinki Maija Koskinen. The curators' assistant is Suvi Saloniemi.
The production of the exhibition is supported by British Council, Goethe Institut Finnland and Istituto Italiano di Cultura.
Download PDF Catalogue
The artists of the exhibition
Follow the links to the artists' websites.
Christiaan Bastiaans
Botto e Bruno
Kalle Hamm
Dzamil Kamanger
Job Koelewijn
Piia Salmi