Kaarina Kaikkonen

About

On this occasion, the artist will show to the public an ensemble with representative works of her artistic practice together with a new body of works specifically conceived for her exhibition in Rome. Kaikkonen puts together raw power materials with a delicate and touching poetry, which is close to her behaviors conceived from a personal point of view to a universal one.

With references which are possible to find among Surrealism and Arte Povera, Kaikkonen elaborates a very intimate approach which focuses on themes related to the dichotomy of the everyday life: life and death, joy and sorrow are the main symbols of her works. These archetypical concerns converge into found objects, giving to the material a primary importance which is directly related to the urgency of narration.

Objects trouvèes have stories to tell. Kaikkonen transforms these found objects into sculptures and installations, both on small and large scale, that convey universal stories and meanings of loss, love, hope and interpersonal relations. Her alphabet is composed by fragments of existence, which form a recognizable language. Discarded clothes, shirts, men’s jackets, shoes bear the traces of their previous lives, becoming monuments to past existences and trustees of traditional social, ethical and political values. Apparently fragile as a cloth fluttering in the wind, Kaarina Kaikkonen’s work is starched and stiffened until it attains the solidity of a weighty monument, resisting in time and space. The clothes are a sensitive film that separate and, at the same time, relate the human being to the surrounding environment, propagating the individual’s identity in society. This is the reason, why Kaarina Kaikkonen’s aesthetic and procedure is always strictly related to the space and its capacity to restructure, time after time, meaning and forms. There is a constant play between construction and deconstruction through a vivid intention to bring in mind a sensitive and profound story that crosses the perceptions of individual and universal meanings.