The opening of the private exhibition by Katja Öhrnberg takes place at Malmitalo Gallery on Wednesday, November 27, at 5 pm! The exhibition runs from 28 November until 21 December, 2024. You are warmly welcome!

Image: Katja Öhrnberg – Alku

The exhibition reflects on the importance of place for painting and the importance of the exhibition space for the exhibition. How do the working and exhibition space affect the final result? When entering an artist residency, taking over a new place often changes painting the artist’s internal landscape to painting the external landscape. For example, in the Villa Karo residence, the different, strong light of Africa in the buildings and the landscape attracted me to paint them, thus making the environment familiar.

Malmitalo’s exhibition space is interesting because of its various surface materials, curved walls and different heights. Öhrnberg found it challenging and exciting to make this space part of the exhibition. For example, she took into account the high space of the gallery with a four-meter plastic painting, and the abstract acrylic painting partially shows the same rhythmicity as in the checkering of the space’s window. The exhibition consists of works completed in residencies and various workspaces and photos that tell about work processes.

The final results of residency work are always affected by very different circumstances.

United Arab Emirates, Liwa (2019, 2021), painting took place concretely with feet in the sand in the middle of the dunes. Only a small herd of camels could be seen in the sandy desert from time to time. It was easy to concentrate on working. On the other hand, when she was workin in Benin as a Villa Karo scholarship holder (2022), the workspace had a disco with 200 students at its worst. In the Serlachius Residency in Mänttä (2023) in the small studio of the wooden house, Öhrnberg’s work turned more inward, in contrast to previous residency experiences, and she made small abstract paintings. In Outokumpu’s Old Mine Residency  (2024), the interesting spaces led to ideas for the work. The old door of the crane room inspired Öhrnberg to make a new version of Helene Schjerfbeck’s painting The Door. In keeping with the theme of our unsustainable waste society, it is a darkly bleak view of our world, a bleak future. What kind of landscape do we want to be revealed behind the door? On closer inspection, the work is surprising when you see the household waste plastics used as the material of the work.

Despite the differences, the works completed in the residencies can be seen not only as a play between colours, but also between light and dark. In a way, they are also a competition for eye direction and attention. Light guides vision, the direction of light and gaze are in constant motion.

Malmitalo Gallery

Ala-Malmitori 1, 00700 Helsinki

Mon–Thu 8–8pm, Fri 8–6pm, Sat 10–4pm