PENGERKATU 7 TYÖHUONE HELSINKI
21.-24. MARCH 2024

Thursday: 14:00-19:00
Friday: 14:00-19:00
Saturday: 14:00-19:00 
Sunday: 14:00-16:00
30′ booking slot (One person at a time)
Free / Booking here:
https://vello.fi/pengerkatu7tyohuone/

TOKONOMA Series 
The tokonoma is a small alcove within a traditional Japanese home which serves as a little stage for showcasing a mise-en-scène consisting of specific works of art, including calligraphy (kakejiku) and floral arrangements (ikebana), often complemented by precious objects of craftsmanship. The tokonoma functions as an indoor container, harmonizing these artifacts to reflect the actual season. The tokonoma is not merely a receptacle but an artwork per se, embodying the multiple interactions at play among architecture, interior, exterior, and the triptych-arrangement poem/flowers/object.
Since 2020, Vincent Roumagnac, meanwhile facilitating ikebana workshops in Työhuone, have been growing the idea of implementing artistic collaborations centered around the notion/practice of tokonoma, the vision finding resonance in the specific layout of Työhuone’s window-bench space.
Eventually, in spring 2024, Vincent launches the new series ‘Tokonoma’, inviting French artist Jérôme Allavena in March and Helsinki-based South-African curator Nina Liebenberg in May to co-create the two first tokonoma constellations, reinterpreting the traditional elements of the Japanese tokonoma through their respective practices, responding to the season as topic, environment, and medium of the encounter.

Jérôme Allavena
Born in 1979 in Montreuil, France. Work represented by the Houg Gallery in Lyon.
Jérôme Allavena explores in drawing the potential of the line, the trace, so it becomes a place of experimentation. Using a deconstruction-reconstruction method, Jérôme Allavena questions the status, dimensions and temporality of an image and triggers experiences of new points of view that a first glance too quickly cannot decode. With Jérôme Allavena, drawing is always a design and works as much to express its genesis, its “mental thing”, its construction as to grasp its temporality, with the idea of showing this fourth dimension, so perceptible (although ) and yet so unrepresentable.
Jérôme Allavena obtained his DNSEP at the EESI in Angoulême in 2008. His work was noticed in 2009 during the 59th edition of Jeune Création in 2009, then during group exhibitions in art centers such as the FRAC Poitou-Charentes (2010, 2014), Palais de Tokyo (2010, 2011) or even Fondation d’entreprise Ricard (Paris, 2012), but also in galleries with Galerie Anne Barrault (Paris, 2012), Galerie De Roussan (2012, Biennale de Belleville ) and Galerie Houg (Paris, 2015). He also participates in residencies such as the Cité des Arts in Paris (2009-2010) and Le Pavillon at the Palais de Tokyo (2010-2011).
In 2015, he joined the Houg Gallery team. He is currently preparing two personal exhibitions for 2024. They will take place at the Chapelle des Dames Blanches, La Rochelle Art Center (France) and at the Galerie Houg, in Lyon (France). 
www.jeromeallavena.com 
www.instagram.com/jerome_allavena

Vincent Roumagnac
Vincent Roumagnac is a Helsinki-based Basque-French discipline-fluid artist and researcher.
Vincent started his career in theater as a director but gradually moved away from straight theater context. Instead, he has been focusing on how the concepts of stage and theatricality transform in the context of climate change, technology, and transmediality, at the crossing of visual, installation, and performing arts, exploring new artistic ways to engage with contemporary, multiple and complex, environments. Since 2010 they team with Finnish choreographer Simo Kellokumpu and since 2012 with French visual artist Aurélie Pétrel, with whom they are, in 2020, winner of the Villa Kujoyama Residency prize.
In 2020, Vincent completed his Doctorate in Arts at TUTKE-Performing Arts Research Centre/Uniarts Helsinki, with his artistic research project ‘Reacclimating the Stage’. He then has been conducting, as a visiting artist-researcher at the same institution, the post-doctoral artistic research project DATA OCEAN THEATRE, whose two artistic parts were publicly shown at the Titanik gallery (Turku) in 2022, and at Kiasma in 2023 on the occasion of the Moving November international festival.
In parallel to his commitment in art and research activities, Vincent have been practicing floral design, based on the techniques learned in their youth in a family of florists and gardeners, and on the practice of ikebana he has developed during several stays in Japan.
Since 2020, Vincent has been co-hosting with Simo Kellokumpu Pengerkatu 7 Työhuone (Massage & Beauty) in Helsinki.
www.vincentroumagnac.com 
www.instagram.com/vincentroumagnac_portfolio