Nordic Culture Point and the Finnish Painters’ Union launches three-year painting project

Nordic Painting is a three-year collaborative project (2022–2024) between Nordic Culture Point in Helsinki and the Finnish Painters’ Union (TML). Within the framework of Nordic Painting, an exhibition collaboration is carried out each year, together with a third party from another Nordic country. In 2022, it will be Norway and the Association of Norwegian Painters (LNM) will act as partners. This year’s exhibition will be divided into two parts and will take place partly in the Finnish Painters’ Union’s gallery in central Helsinki, and partly in Nordic Culture Point’s historic premises in Suomenlinna (2 November to 20 November 2022).

In January 2022, a joint open call was arranged for the members of the two unions. A total of 106 applications were received. A jury consisting of Randi Thommessen and Maiken Stene from LNM, Alina Mänttäri and Sampo Apajalahti from TML, and Annika Bergvik-Forsander from Nordic Culture Point, selected four artists to participate in the upcoming exhibition.

Among the Norwegian artists, the jury selected Ingrid Toogood and Espen Brændsrød,and among the Finns, Satu Rautiainen and Meri Toivanen were selected to participate in the exhibition.

Nordic Culture Point is one of the Nordic Council of Ministers’ cultural institutions and its purpose is to initiate and support pan-Nordic art and cultural projects, as well as contribute to increased knowledge of Nordic contemporary art and culture both in Finland and in the rest of the Nordic Region. In the project Nordic Painting, Nordic Culture Point acts as a sponsor for the costs of the Nordic guest artists’ participation in the exhibitions.

Meri Toivanen (b. 1996), based in Finland and Belgium, is currently finishing her master’s degree in painting in The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerpen. Toivanen’s work has been presented in group exhibitions in Belgium. In her body of work, Toivanen researches the borderlines of figuration through the painting process with semi-monochromatic colour use and elements of fading, disintegration and diffusion. The hues of green to blue signify neutrality and purity. She became interested in games, in situations where power plays take place as a group of individuals become one unit around a table or a gameboard. The symbolism of power is explored in both the literal and abstract sense, filtered through events and meetings related to game plays in their performative dimension, such as matches of chess, backgammon and billiards. As her referential inventory, Toivanen uses Finnish movie history, playing with the disconnection of these images as fragments of popular culture, for new insights to emerge.

Ingrid Toogood (b.1976) Lives and works in Stavanger, Norway. She works across multiple platforms including painting, sculpture, installation, and performance. Through optical illusions, using shadows and mirrors, she addresses issues such as emptiness and loss. The mirror and the shadow represent unstable forms of reality and offer a way of manipulating perceptions of space in two and three dimensions.
https://www.toogood.no/