2.1.—15.1.2025
Aurea Tanttu

There’s a juniper here with green gold needles. A Juniperus communis Depressa Aurea’ – a Golden Flat Juniper. Here the nights are transparent, cyanine blue. We drink the cool air through our nostrils, my cheeks are flushed from the fire. I feel like a small girl once again, which is the most fervent emotion I’ve ever come to know. I go on endlessly, there is no edge, I am as big as the world, the world is as tiny as me. But the days back home are opaque and full of mistranslations. I’ve spoken the language before and forgotten. Shame for not knowing better is crimson. We fumble for a colour, not a word.

The exhibition comprises of oil paintings on jute that are interpretations of images that I received through a phone correspondence in the fall of 2023. The photographs were sent to me from a tree nursery in the outskirts of Warsaw, where my penpal worked as a gardener. The nursery is a familiar place to me, but working with the location from afar has skewed my perception of its scale and reality. A pool of pictures that were shared through satellites are each given a body in my studio in Stockholm. The gardener has selected what to frame with the camera; that which is worth ’visiting’ with paint, based on his idea of my practice. The rough property of the jute correlates with the disappearance of the photographs as they travel through space and lose detail. New information emerges in the painted version, and now I walk in a wholly different territory. I am in two places at once. I am both painting and gardening, dreaming in two tongues, tending a new vocabulary.

Vernissage: 3.1. 17–19
Tue-Fri 13-18
Sat-Sun 13-16