HAA Gallery presents works from Sanna Kananoja’s new painting series Water’s course after yesterday, where she uses repetition to examine the relationship between the starting point and the painting process in her work based on photographs. Each painting in the series has exactly the same starting point, a photograph of the roadside. This image represents self-evident and functional everyday nature.

Water’s course after yesterday deals with the nearby nature, focusing on the repetition of everyday life, the similarity of days and moments. All the paintings are based on a view from Kananoja’s daily commute. The difference between looking and seeing things is clear on a familiar journey. The subject is ordinariness: its safety, invisibility and unquestionability. Roads and roadsides are only possible through a huge amount of earthmoving. Rocks are blasted, trees are felled, earth is dug up and the flow of water is directed. Most of the Earth’s land surface has already been changed by humans. The small piece of earth that appears in Kananoja’s works represents this larger phenomenon.

In everyday life, the landscapes of Kananoja’s works are usually not even thought of as real nature, but as part of the built environment. In the paintings, the matter turns around – the viewer sees nature, it takes on an independent meaning, and everyday environments become ideal landscapes for a moment. During the Romantic era, man was depicted as small next to the great forces of nature, for example on top of a lonely mountain. In her works, Kananoja presents the same thing with everyday elements: humans act in order to control but nature seeks its own way, being small, big, wild and unpredictable.

Repetition brings routine and exposes to boredom as Kananoja focuses on the same sketch photo for a long time. The subject recedes into the background but is underlined at the same time. Change and immutability are constantly present in the paintings. They highlight the control and uncontrollability of the painting process, where the goal is always to start from the beginning.

Sanna Kananoja (b. 1979 Pirkkala) lives and works in Oulu. She graduated as a visual artist from the Turku Academy of Arts in 2010. Kananoja’s works have been exhibited in numerous solo and joint exhibitions. She belongs to the Artists’ Association of Finland and the artists’ societies of Oulu and Turku. Kananoja’s works are included in the Finnish State Art Deposit Collection, the city of Turku, the Oulu Art Museum, University of Turku Central Hospital and HUS, as well as in private collections.