Photo reportage from the exhibition exhibition 'Like a Windless Cloud' at Hobusepea Gallery

August 30, 2023
Author Echo Gone Wrong

On August Hobusepea Gallery celebrated the opening of a group exhibition Like a Windless Cloud. The exhibition is curated by Mariliis Rebane and includes sculptures by Touristes Tristes (Dylan Ray Arnold & Océane Bruel), series of postcards by Leena Kela, video works by artists Kristoffer Ala-Ketola, and Mika Taanila and a lecture performance by Shubhangi Singh. Like a Windless Cloud remains open until September 4.

The exhibition forms a constellation in which artworks interlace through their shared reflections on the accumulation of time. The curator of the exhibition was interested in searching for possibilities while also acknowledging difficulties associated with emptiness, lingering, and putting up one’s feet. In the company of the artworks, she wanted to welcome rest, slowing down, and taking it easy, as well as watching clouds pass over a clear blue sky. Along the way, came up an inability or unwillingness to succeed in this, but also other expectations related to the fast pace of contemporary life.

During the opening evening on Friday, August 11 at 18:30, you are invited to take part in a lecture performance titled Rest/Unrest: Notes on Loitering by Shubhangi Singh.

As part of the exhibition, a column by journalist Anton Vanha-Majamaa is translated into English and Estonian.

Like a Windless Cloud is supported by Kone Foundation and Arts Promotion Centre Taike. All exhibitions at Hobusepea gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, the Ministry of Culture, and Liviko AS.

The curator is now on holiday!

Kristoffer Ala-Ketola is a multidisciplinary artist from Oulu, Finland who graduated from Yale School of Art with a Master of Fine Arts in 2019. His works have been previously exhibited in 4th Ward Project Space in Chicago, Shin Gallery in New York, and Kunsthalle Helsinki, and he has also participated in video screenings at the Helsinki International Film Festival and Video Art Festival Turku. Ala-Ketola’s work engages in recurring themes of human emotion, crisis, and dreaming.

Leena Kela (b. 1979, Finland) is a performance artist, a doctoral candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of the Arts Helsinki, an artistic director of the New Performance Turku Biennale, and a director of the Saari Residence. In her works and artistic research, she explores dialogues between corporeality and materiality. She makes performances that play with and twist our relationship with everyday objects, perceptions, and phenomena. She has presented performances internationally in every continent except Antarctica.

Mariliis Rebane (b. 1985, Tallinn) is a curator and researcher currently living and working in Helsinki. She is interested in creative practices that engage with time, duration, and processes as well as the capacity of art to expand our understanding of the past. Rebane is a graduate of the Praxis Master’s Programme at the Uniarts Helsinki and holds an Art History MA Degree from Helsinki University.

Shubhangi Singh’s (b.1984, Mumbai) practice often draws upon existing knowledge to address movement, identity, queries related to the body, and its relationship with its environment. Singh considers ideas of absence and absenting in her work as a way of reflecting upon what is visible, particularly in relation to history, memory, and the labour of memorialising. Singh holds a Master’s degree in Visual Cultures, Curating, and Contemporary Art from Aalto University and is the co-founder of New City Limits, an initiative to facilitate creative viewing and practice in Navi Mumbai, India. She currently lives and works in Helsinki.

Mika Taanila (b. 1965) is a filmmaker and visual artist based in Helsinki, Finland. He works with documentaries, experimental film, and visual arts. Human engineering, utopias, failures, and man-machines are recurring themes in his films and installations.

Touristes Tristes is a collaboration between Océane Bruel and Dylan Ray Arnold, Helsinki-based visual artists working together alongside their individual practices. With a material-poetic approach, they create sculptures, objects, installations, and printed matter. Rooted in the corporeality of everyday life, they look into the ambivalent material spirit of objects, places, and systems. They are interested in the compositions between static and mobile bodies, and forms as sculptural situations and images.

Anton Vanha-Majamaa (b. 1988) is a culture journalist and an author living in Helsinki, Finland. His work has been featured in Yleisradio (the Finnish Broadcasting Company), Helsingin Sanomat, Image Magazine, and others. He has written books about cannabis, movies, TV, and Finnish pop artists. Currently he’s busy exercising, playing Nintendo, and hanging out with his wife and dog.

Hobusepea
Exhibition Like a Windless Cloud
Curator Mariliis Rebane
Artists: Kristoffer Ala-Ketola, Océane Bruel, Dylan Ray Arnold, Leena Kela,Shubhangi Singh & Mika Taanila
Open: 11.08.-4.09.2023
Hobusepea Gallery, Hobusepea 2, Tallinn.
Wed-Mon 11.00-18.00

Photography: Anna Mari Liivrand