Amos Rex - Ars Fennica

I saw the Ars Fennica nominees at Amos Rex Art Museum. Two Icelandic, two Finnish and one Swedish contemporary artists competed for the € 40,000 prize - the biggest art award in Finland. The jury had selected the nominees and the winner was elected by Roland Wetzel, the director of the Museum Tingeuely  in Basel.  I'll tell you the award winner and audience favorite at the end of this post - so you can think about who might be your personal favourite.

1. Petri Ala-Maunus FI (b. 1970) - History and Utopia of Landscape

Enormous woodland landscape dominating the entire wall, in romantic style.
He painted this long painting for 9 months. It consists of seven panels and is 14 m long.

2. Miriam Bäckström SE (b. 1967) - Psychopath 

Two huge textile missiles floating above the heads. The working process is complicated.
A great amount of strongly enlargened photos has first amalgamated into a kind of mix. 
Then a computer programmed weaving  machine has woven the objects. 

3. Ragnar Kjartansson IS (b. 1976) - The Boat

Photo Art Basel

A stunning blue landscape with a boat floating & a hetero pair. The 2,5 h lasting video 

consists of repeating - only minimally changing - scenes between the couple. 

The artist ironizes our rich western world using Switzerland as a symbol of the welfare. 

The stereotypes between genders are made clear with courting nuances and behaviour of the pair.

4. Egill Sæbjörnsson IS (b. 1973) - The Paintings & The trolls in Hellsinki

Sæbjörnsson's work was fun and colorful: he had created a café based on the Icelandic 

traditional belief that trolls called Huldufolk are real. The public could get acquainted 

with the book Trolls in Hellsinki and the orange piano played troll music by itself.

5. Aurora Reinhard FI (b. 1975) - Broken

Reinhard's nominee work consists of nine different parts, modeled by herself.

She studies the struggle of power between sexes. In the art world men dominate and 

there is a long tradition of naked ’ resting nudes’ - the painters being 90% men 

and the models women. The artist provokes with the roles left for a woman: 

a madonna or a whore.

Für Juttas Digital Art Dienstag habe ich eine Bearbeitung von Reinhard bearbeitet.

Ich kann mich nicht genau an den Namen dieses Werks erinnern - eine gekreuzigte Künstlerin?

For Jutta’s Digital Art Tuesday I made an edit of one of Reinhard’s works.
I don’t remember the exact name of this work - a crucified female artist?

Well, which would be your favourite?

The award winner was the boat video of  Ragnar Kjartansson! I only watched the video for a few minutes, so I missed its secrets. The audience favourite was Petri Ala-Maunus with his huge green landscpe. My personal favourite was Aurora Reinhard. From Helsinki the Ars Fennica nominees go to Stockholm.

// DIGITAL ART DIENSTAG
// IMAGE-IN-ING
// ALL SEASONS
// MY CORNER OF THE WORLD 
// WEDNESDAY AROUND THE WORLD