Nominated as an Open Art Miami finalist
The International Contemporary Art Competition 2017, organized by Open Art Miami, has presented the decisions by the Selection Committee. Over 2000 works of art were received from all over the world, mostly from United States, Canada, Spain, France, Italy, Japan, among other nations.
Ulla Karttunen was nominated as a finalist in the Digital Art section.
Exhibition in Marais, Paris
Group exhibition at Galerie Thuillier, Paris, opens: vernissage Jun 23 2017, at 18-21 o’clock. The gallery situates in the Marais gallery district, near Picasso Museum and Place des Vosges.
GALERIE THUILLIER 13, rue de Thorigny 75003 Paris. The exhibition is open Jun 23 – Jul 6 2017, from Tuesday to Saturday, at 13-19.
Place des Vosges, the oldest square in Paris
Donna Criminale visits Basel
ARTBOX project displays artworks on an oversized screen during Art Basel Week at Euroairport’s event platform Luminator, 14 June – 18 June 2017, Switzerland. The image of installation Donna Criminale, by Ulla Karttunen, is part of this collective digital show.
Ulla Karttunen: Donna Criminale, 2016, installation (toilet paper etc.), 400 x 400 cm. The white gallery environment is from Galleria Poggiali e Forconi, Florence, where, at the exhibition Taboo, the artwork won The Best Project Prize.
Artbox.project Basel 1.0
Collective exhibition ARTBOX.PROJECT BASEL 1.0. Event platform Luminator, Euroairport, Swiss side, 14 June – 18 June 2017.
Blooming Lady Arrives in Paris
Today it opens at Carrousel du Louvre, Paris, salon international d’art contemporain, Art Shopping 20ème edition. Vernissage on Friday evening, Jun 9 2017, from 07:00 pm, with invitation only. Open for public Saturday Jun 10 from 10:00 am to 08:00 pm, Sunday Jun 11 from 10:00 am to 07:00 pm.
Ulla Karttunen: Donna Florale, 2017, digital collage, acrylic-mounted pigment print (diasec), 70 x 70 cm. On show at Carrousel du Louvre, 9-11 June 2017.
Contemporary Art Fair at Carrousel du Louvre
Participating at contemporary art fair, salon international d’art contemporain, Art Shopping 20ème edition, at Carrousel du Louvre, Paris, 9 June – 11 June. More than 400 artists and galleries present their works of contemporary art. Last year the event gathered 26 000 visitors.
Carrousel du Louvre, 99 rue de Rivoli, Paris
Coming soon: Paris & Basel
Contemporary art fair at Carrousel du Louvre, Paris, 9-11 June 2017, and collective show ARTBOX.PROJECT at Basel artweeks, Eventspace Luminator, Basel 14-18 June 2017; both participated by Ulla Karttunen. The work shown in Basel is Donna Criminale, and in Paris another evil lady, Donna Florale.
Mortality / Immortality
Ulla Karttunen: Mortals / Kuolevaisia, 2013-2017, 9 parts, each 26,6 x 20 x 2, a series of digital collages, on show at Art Fair Suomi ’17
The series Mortals consists of dark portraits of unidentifiable figures, pigment prints mounted under thick acrylic glass. The digital collages mix materials from two contrary directions – from graveyards and advertising. The project, as a contemporary version of memento mori, studies existence, death, and strive for immortality in the contemporary secular market-based society.
Both the photographs of the dead in the graveyards and glamorous media imagery share the same fate of fading away. Photographs of the dead in gravestones are often worn and almost vanished, however the ancient figures seem to bear unbelievable dignity. On the contrary, contemporary media images are technically brilliant and aesthetically capturing, but soon lose their shine in the continual information flow. When immortality is so badly striven for, it is hardly accessed.
Martin Heidegger writes about ”the fourfold”, a unity, where ”earth and sky, divinities and mortals” are in one. This union of mortality and divinity/immortality describes for him the experience of being. Being can reach its completeness only with death, being toward death. – Analogously these digital portraits do not depict individuals, but being in its ambiguity, when mortality and divinity, at least momentarily, transfix each other.
”I shall be Nobody; soon, I shall be all men—I shall be dead”, tells the protagonist in the short story The Immortal by Jorge Luis Borges. In media society, immortality is tried to be gained by selfie repetition and becoming obsessively Somebody. Although the sublime immortality could be found maybe from the other end, of becoming Nobody, all humans, in front of death.
Mortals / Kuolevaisia/ at Art Fair Suomi ’17
Ulla Karttunen: Mortals / Kuolevaisia, 2013-2017, 9 parts, each 26,6 x 20 x 2, a series of digital collages, on show at Art Fair Suomi ’17
Avantgarde is here
”Avantgarde is here”, reports the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat from Art Fair Suomi ’17.
International Contemporary Art Festival AF Suomi ’17, at Cable Factory, Helsinki, 25 May – 28 May 2017
