Sinne starts the new year with Corinna Helenelund’s Brunnen, Pölen, Djupet, Öppna (Swedish for: the well, the puddle, the deep, open). The exhibition consists of five woven works and five books, in all of which the colours red, green, yellow and blue are repeated. The textile-sculptural installation invites us to immerse ourselves in colour and form, warp and weft, in the well, the puddle, the deep, and the open.

Helenelund usually works with sculptures made out of textiles. One starting point for this exhibition has been rags – leftovers, gaps, remnants that come about when bits are cut off during the form-finding work on the sculptures. The woven material in the exhibition consists of these leftovers, recycled old artworks, carpet rags, and sheets that Helenelund has dyed. She took up weaving as a technique while living at Pro Artibus’ Villa Snäcksund residence. “Weaving was something I had long wanted to learn, and Snäcksund gave me the time and the peace and quiet for this slow process. Rags – the unwanted, the leftover, the frayed – gradually became my material. Weaving creates a kind of act of healing, when all the small fragments are joined together,” she says.

Helenelund’s second starting point has been the floor. The floor is where the bits end up as leftovers when they are cut off, but it also ultimately becomes the home for the rag rugs once they are woven. Thus, the significance of the floor also varies throughout our lives. How does the floor hold us up when we feel broken, and how does it hold us up when we have sat or lain down on it to meditate or daydream? All the works in the exhibition mirror perceived floor states, glimpses and instants when something more intense has emerged – moments of clarity or brokenness – and when the floor has borne an extra-heavy weight. Helenelund shows us colours that embrace us – states in which words suddenly play less of a role, this also being reflected in the works’ one-word titles. A single word can still have several meanings: a well can be a source that gives, but also something one can fall into. The deep can be frightening and take us too far down, but turning deep inwards can be a path to solace.

Words continue to be present in the books placed on top of the blue work Djupet. The text and images in the books also reflect on different mental states bound up with the rags and the floor. We invite the audience to lie down on the blue work – to take a moment for their own thoughts or to take a look at the books.

Eveliina Tuulonen
Communications and Gallery Coordinator

Corinna Helenelund

Corinna Helenelund (b. 1985) graduated in 2013 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, where she lives and works. She was Pro Artibus Villa Snäcksund residency artist in 2020-22. Brunnen, Pölen, Djupet, Öppna is Helenelund’s second solo exhibition at Sinne. Her first was Night Again in 2016. Her most recent exhibitions include the solo show The Backyard on The Seventh Floor at das weisse haus Kunstverein in Vienna in 2022 and at HAM Gallery, Helsinki, in 2020. In 2019, she had a duo exhibition with Lauri Anttila (1938–2022) at Gallery Sculptor, Helsinki, and in 2018 with Lukas Malte Hoffmann at Titanik in Turku. She has also participated in group exhibitions at: Artsi in Vantaa; WAM in Turku; Kunstverein Göttingen in Germany; Norrköpings Konstmuseum in Sweden; EKKM in Tallinn; and The Community in Paris. In 2018, Helenelund was HIAP artist-in-residence on Suomenlinna, Helsinki. She has made a public work in the form of a bus stop in Porvoo, as well as set designs for the theatre.

Forthcoming projects include duo exhibitions with Lukas Malte Hoffmann at the Finnish Institute in Stockholm in April 2024, and at Milieu in Bern, Switzerland, in July 2024.

corinnahelenelund.com

Program during the exhibition

In 2016, grades 1 and 2 from Cygnaeus School in Helsinki took part in workshops held as part of Corinna Helenelund’s Night Again exhibition at Sinne. In 2024, we will bring back those same pupils, who are now in grades 8 and 9. The workshop includes a guided meditation session.

Workshops will also be offered to kindergarten groups, with a focus on the body, feelings, play that creates worlds, and how a thread becomes a surface. Kindergartens Marias Asyl, Daghemmet Roban, Daghemmet Axel and Kronohagens förskola will participate in the workshops.

Sinne is part of the monthly Finnish-language downtown-Helsinki gallery tour Kantakaupungin galleriakierros. The tour will visit Sinne at 3:30pm on Sunday, January 14, and at 3:00pm on Sunday, February 4. Corinna Helenelund will be present on January 14. All welcome, admission free.

The exhibition has been supported by

The Swedish Cultural Foundation, Finnish Cultural Foundation and Arts Promotion Centre Finland