Updates
Since the mid-2000s I’ve sought to disengage moving image art from human-centredness.
Jesper Just organizes and designs a video installation into a set for the performance to be staged therein.
When a create a painting, it somehow entails a world – with the human figure and their environment.
ARS FENNICA Candidates for 2021
FINLAND
NORWAY
A repeating theme in Anne-Karin Furunes’ art is that of the female character victim to historic events beyond her control. She uses different archives to search for pictures that move her. These small photographs, originally taken for bureaucratic purposes, are enlarged into paintings often over two metres in height.
DENMARK
Jesper Just became known some twenty years ago for videos in which tense psychological encounters lead to emotionally loaded scenes. What has happened, or was happening, is not quite clear. No one of the characters is speaking, but there may be a song accompanying the situation or the characters may communicate by singing. Jesper Just’s recent installations explore ideas of agency, performativity, and interpassivity.
FINLAND
Painter and author Viggo Wallensköld depicts life’s absurdity through a series of fictional characters. Over the years, his works, which typically feature just one main character, have come together to form a cohesive entity, a universe all of their own, comprising a series of intertwining themes. Wallensköld’s paintings explore the physical diversity of humans and our ability to cope with difference.
SWEDEN
Magnus Wallin’s art constitutes an exploration of the human body. It is not just the relationship between bodies and norms that fascinates Magnus Wallin, but how many permutations of these bodies there are, and how they constitute different modes of understanding.
The joint exhibition for candidates’ works will be held at Hämeenlinna Art Museum from 15 October 2021 to 3 April 2022. The audience can also vote for their own favorite artist.
ARS FENNICA 2019
The work of Ragnar Kjartansson (born 1976 in Reykjavik, Iceland) is originally grounded in theatre, performance and painting. But, as he moves freely between art forms, he makes music sculptural, painting performative, and turns film into tableaux vivants.
From the archive
Magnus Wallin Candidates 2021 Magnus Wallin’s art constitutes an exploration of the human body. It is not just the relationship between bodies and norms that
Anne-Karin Furunes Candidates 2021 A repeating theme in Anne-Karin Furunes’ art is that of the female character victim to historic events beyond her control. She
Viggo Wallensköld Candidates 2021 Viggo Wallensköld, depicts life’s absurdity through a series of fictional characters. Over the years, his works, which typically feature just one
First ARS Fennica candidates 1991
ARS FENNICA -foundation
The Henna and Pertti Niemistö Art Foundation – ARS FENNICA sr was established in 1990 to promote the arts by opening up new channels for Finnish visual art internationally, by providing artists with inspiration in their creative work, and by encouraging interest in and respect for the visual arts among the general public.
In alternate years, the Foundation awards Finland’s most significant visual-art prize – 50,000 euros. The prize goes to an artist in recognition of individual artistic work of outstanding quality.
