The opening event of Elina Brotherus’ solo exhibition ’Spaces and Places’ at Helsinki Contemporary on Thursday, March 30 at 5–7pm.

A conversation that goes into the background and themes of the exhibition will take place at the gallery on Friday, March 31 at 5pm onwards. Talking with Elina Brotherus will be the exhibition’s curator Mika Hannula.

Elina Brotherus’ ’Spaces and Places’ is the artist’s first gallery exhibition in Finland in a long time, and her first-ever show at Helsinki Contemporary. In April/May the gallery space will be filled with a previously unseen set of works from four different series of photographs. The exhibition is made up of dialogues with works by the famous artists Amaldus Nielsen, René Magritte and John Baldessari, and of a selection of pictures made at the Didrichsen Art Museum. The dialogue between artists adds a temporal dimension to the exhibition, a journey from romanticism, via surrealism, to the core of postmodern contemporary art.

In the pictures on display in the exhibition Brotherus takes up a position in space that is always relative to the surroundings and the landscape, but also to art history. The dialogue with these paintings or with the texts made by deceased artists becomes visible. The pictures are events, but at the same time they are spaces in which a friendship is enacted. Through them the connection to someone else who is personally important is made real. “Artists need other artists. We have teachers from our student days, and later on self- chosen ones, to offer us a helping hand. Connections, chains, affinities and friendships are important. They are places where art is thought about and enthused about.”

’Spaces and Places’ runs through May 14.