Niina Tervo / Olli Keränen: Clue Binder | 6.–29.11.2020

The exhibition opens on Thursday 5th November without reception. The artists are at the gallery.

The exhibition Clue Binder by Niina Tervo and Olli Keränen brings together the fabric of observations created through various material experiments. Both artists are interested in leaving open an aspect of their contribution and to see if the other artist could be careful enough in their observations to be able to take turns finding the missing part to add to the other’s work.

In the exhibition, the artists can be seen building on each other’s work, forming a stratification which neither could have accomplished without the other’s mind and preferences. Authorship and the dissolution of objects from the finished through the suspicious into crumbs is a way for both authors to perceive and converse with the circle of life around us.

In their exhibition, the artists want to ask themselves the question: Can the unusability of a work of art create an opportunity for the viewer to perceive the fragmentation of the conflicting goals created by modern life? And from each other, could they be whole together or separately, or should they be something else and if so is change, profound change possible? In other words, can an object that scratches itself because it has set desires inside that it cannot and does not want to fulfill serve as some kind of healing or, on the other hand, a warning example to its experiencer?
Clue Binder is the result of a search, alternatively brisk and at times fumbling.

Sour shell

Blackleg

Binder

nasal mucus

Snottite

in a frenzied mood

Reveller

Syzygy

Olli Keränen (b.1979) studied sculpture and graduated in 2006 from the Academy of Fine Arts. The latest exhibitions include Fount, SIC 2017 and Interior, a duo exhibition with Biba Fibiger at Den Nordiske Ambassaden in Copenhagen in 2018. Keränen received the Raimo Utriainen Art Foundation Award in 2013. He spent six months at an ISCP residency in New York in the spring of 2018.

Niina Tervo (b.1983) graduated from the Painting Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in 2018. During the last couple of years, she has participated in group exhibitions in Berlin’s Galerie Im Körnerpark, Helsinki Art Museum, Kiasma and The Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art, and held a solo exhibition at HAM Gallery. She has recently returned to Finland after a year-long residency at the Jan Van Eyck Academy, where she also participated in the Open Studios group exhibition and made a duo exhibition together with Youngeun Sohn as part of the Environmental Identities series.

Niina Tervo and Olli Keränen usually work on their own practices but share history as each other’s assistants. The exhibition in Titanik is the first time they bring their works together and try to share the authorship in making the works.

The artists’ work has been supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland.