Diamond palaa
Diamond represents – Summer Exhibition,
3rd – 31st July, Open Tue-Sun, noon – 6 pm,
Antinkatu 7, Pori, Finland
Artists: Mi Duncker, Eeva-Leena Eklund, Pia Euro, Kaarina Haka, Terhi Heino, Päivi Häkkinen, Kati Immonen, Marikka Kiirikoff, Tanja Koponen, Tiina Laitanen, Mimosa Pale, Kalle Turakka Purhonen, Pauliina Turakka Purhonen, Miia Rinne, Maiju Salmenkivi, Minna Suoniemi, Marja Söderlund, Milla Toivanen, Laura Wesamaa and KARIEL aka Muriel Lässer and Karri Kuoppala.
Happenings: July 24–25 JOKAklubi organized by Niina Lehtonen Braun, Tellervo Kalleinen and Mirka Raito, music and performances
Curators: Clothes designer Piia Rinne, artist Eeva-Leena Eklund, artist Miia Rinne and freelance writer Liisa Jokinen.
www.diamondpori.com
KARIEL: To Be (is to burn), 2010,
sculpture, silk and other fabrics, wood, plaster, metal, rubber, stone
dimensions: 130 x 60 x 60 cm,
Diamond palaa, Pori
KARIEL is Muriel Lässer and Karri Kuoppala
Version 10 – Infrastructures and Territories
Version Group Exhibition: Territories,
Thursday April 22st – May 3rd 2010,
Zhou B Art Center, Chicago
Produced by the Public Media Institute, a non profit 501(c)(3) arts organization, Version is an annual springtime arts festival that brings together hundreds of artists, musicians, and educators from around the world to present some of the most challenging ideas and progressive art initiatives of our day. The eleven day festival showcases emerging trends in art, technology and music.
Version festival presents a diverse program of activities featuring an exposition/art fair called the NFO XPO, visiting exhibitions, A temporary shelter project, public interventions, video screenings, interactive technologies, performances, live art, presentations, talks, workshops, art rendezvous and action. Much of Version>10 Territories and Infrastructures was programmed via a call for submissions. Other projects and programs were selected and curated by the Version 10 organizers.
Version Group Exhibition: Territories is curated by Dayton Castelman
www.versionfest.org/V10/
KARIEL: The Magician’s Hat, 2010,
video sculpture, painted OSB and wood, flat screen, eagle feather, video on DVD,
dimensions: 240 x 240 x 240 cm,
Version 10, Chicago
KARIEL is Muriel Lässer and Karri Kuoppala
Sihlhallenstrasse Neunzehn
March 24th – April 4th 2010,
Sihlhallenstrasse 19, Zurich
Sihlhallenstrasse Neunzehn is for an art where nothing is too much, too foreign, too little or too silly. The exhibited works are not necessarily linked by subject matter or media. They are connected by a certain joy, by an interest in life - good, bad or peculiar.
Curated by Bettina Mürner and Sebastian Utzni
www.bettinamuerner.com/sihlhallenstrasseneunzehn/
KARIEL: Die Zeit des Brütens, 2010,
C-print, steel plate, colored turkey feathers, 120 x 120 x 180 cm
KARIEL is Muriel Lässer and Karri Kuoppala
Urban Studies
The Nut, Shanghai
Thursday January 21st, 2010, 6pm onwards
Urban Studies discusses the possibilities of sustainability in an urban environment. The project brings together various art practitioners in order to discuss and share ideas on the issues of sustainability, urban planning and development in the context of urban life forms.
Curated by: Aura Seikkula in collaboration with Marita Muukkonen, HIAP and Diana Freundl
Participating artists: Jukka Korpihete & Tuomas Laitinen, Karri Kuoppala, Sauli Sirviö and Jenni Valorinta.
The NUT Lab
1147 Kangding Rd. (Corner with South Wuning Lu) 1/F, Bld E, Room 102, Shanghai
www.thenutlab.com
Karri Kuoppala: The Blue Demon, 2010,
acrylics on wall 180 x 320 cm,
The nut, Shanghai
Forest
Co-Prosperity Sphere, Chicago
Friday, October 16, 2009 through November 1, 2009
Opening reception: October 16, 7pm to 10pm
As a part of Jenni Rope’s Forest there will be Finnish Art Film Show featuring the works Timo Vaittinen, Karri Kuoppala, Anssi Kasitonni, Sari Palosaari, Nicolas Schevin, Anna Virtanen, Elina Minn.
As visitors of Forest architect Tuomas Siitonen and Karri Kuoppala build an installation in the front window of Co-Prosperity Sphere.
www.coprosperity.org
Karri Kuoppala and Tuomas Siitonen: Forest, 2009,
window installation, wood, dimensions 9 x 2 x 2 m,
Co-Prosperity Sphere gallery, Chicago
Daydreams and Nightmares
7–25 October, 2009
Karri Kuoppala’s solo exhibition in Gallery Huuto, Viiskulma, Helsinki
The exhibition Daydreams and Nightmares by artist Karri Kuoppala is an installation that consists of sculptures, painting and a video. The basis for the exhibition is fear and its surroundings. The unknown and thus incomprehensible appears to us as frightening.
The works have been inspired by the artist’s childhood nightmares larded with popular horror imagery. To Kuoppala, who is known for his extensive video works, the palpability of the experience of seeing has become more and more important. The return to the materiality, physicality, and the hand-made feature of the working process is a logical continuum.
Karri Kuoppala’s exhibition Daydreams and Nightmares, at Galleria Huuto Viiskulma, is open to the public 7–25 October, 2009.
The exhibition has been kindly supported by the Alfred Kordelin Foundation and the Majaoja-säätiö foundation.
www.galleriahuuto.net
Karri Kuoppala: Daydreams and Nightmares, 2009
installation views, Gallery Huuto, Helsinki
Art Battle, We Love Helsinki Festival
We Love Helsinki Festival’s Art Battle
Inner Court Yard of Kuudes Linja, Helsinki
July 26, 2009
We Love Helsinki Festival’s Art Battle was participated by Janne Viljakainen, Jani Tolin, Trama, Egs and me. Each of us got a nice big board to paint on and the works were created on a nice sunny Saturday afternoon. The finished pieceswere auctioned and the money was given to Amnesty. This was the first time I used my two-foot wide broom to paint with. No artists were harmed during the Art Battle.
Karri Kuoppala: The Serpent’s Smile, 2009,
acrylics on board, 200 x 300 cm,
The work is in a private collection.
Think About Death / Tänka på döden
Stockholm Cultural Festival
August 11- 15, 2009
Organized by MAP, Mobile Art Production
Artists:
Adel Abidin
Igor Antic
Cecilia Edefalk
Carl Michael von Hausswolff
Karri Kuoppala
Hans Rosenström
The Day of the Dead is a Mexican holiday which celebrates the dead with a festival lasting for three days. With skeletons, sugar skulls and prayers for their souls, the memory of the dead is honoured in a fête that is also a celebration of life.
Around the corner from the buzz of this year’s Culture Festival, MAP explores how we relate to the thought of death. It may be a bleak prospect but it also makes us realise that we are alive and helps us see the poetic fragility and beauty of life.
The exhibition presents some of Sweden’s most prominent artists and three of Finland’s most exciting younger artists.
The title of the exhibition is borrowed from the inscription above the entrance to Stampen cemetery in Göteborg. This seemingly brutal exhortation sheds some light on how our thoughts about death have changed in the past 100 years. From having been poignantly present in everyday life, death has turned into something that we may talk about but seldom allow ourselves to reflect upon.
The inscription at the cemetery gate transports us to another time when people, who are no longer with us, had a different relationship to death. The fact that we react to the inscription indicates the absence of death in our everyday. For example, what does it mean that death is often more present in fictions we encounter on television, in film and computer games than in our everyday life?
“There is a crack in everything, that’s where the light gets in”, Leonard Cohen sings. In a similar way, perhaps the thought of death can make life and the body more present.
Think about Death is produced by MAP, Mobile Art Production and is part of Stockholm Culture Festival. Thanks to the Swedish National Property Board, Klara Church, Nordic Culture Point, Showlighters and FRAME in Helsinki. Coutesy Galleri Niklas Belenius and Galleri Brandstrom.
The exhibition is a collaboration with Aura Sekkula and Korjaamo Gallery in Helsinki, and will be presented in two versions; one at Korjaamo Gallery and one at the Stockholm Culture Festival.
www.mobileartproduction.se
Karri Kuoppala: A Dieu, 2008–09
installation view, Tänka på döden/Think about Death,
Mobile Art Production, Stockholm
Photo: Per Kristiansen
Innocent When You Dream
Gallery Myymälä2, Helsinki
15.07 – 02.08.2009
and
Gallery SteinslandBerliner, Stockholm
7.8. – 21.8.2009
and
Galleri ORO, Gothenburg
5 september - 20 september, 2009
Group exhibition bringing together works by Stefan Marx, Marcus Oakley, Jens Andersson, Jan Tomson, Tuukka Kaila, Timo Vaittinen, Tatu Engeström and Karri Kuoppala
The exhibition brings together an international group of like-minded daydreamers and well –wishing creators from around northern Europe. Although from various backgrounds and disciplines, the artists included share common inspirations drawing from popular culture and the mundane everyday, in a highly contagious attempt at seeing beauty in the people, objects and incidents that make up their immediate surroundings. As much as there is variety in the choice of media and subject matter within the show, there are great many similarities in the artists’ approach to making art. They all share a strong sense of almost innocent enthusiasm and readiness to embrace the life around them, a sort of nostalgia for a positive present that manifests itself through their work, a way of seeing the city around them as an endless resource of raw artistic materials and renewable creative energy. Innocent when you dream transforms the gallery space into a disco ball of art, reflecting the life outside the white walls and beaming it right back into the eyeholes of the unsuspecting gallery goers.
www.myymala2.com
www.steinslandberliner.blogspot.com
www.orosmoment.com
Karri Kuoppala: Summer Night’s Dream, 2009,
ink and oil stick on paper, 140 x 140 cm,
Karri Kuoppala: The Monster Series 1-3, 2009,
linocuts on Japanese paper, 14 x 20 cm.