In her new solo exhibition, Wavefolder, Eeva Lietonen sees paintings and painting as a place for movement. In her powerfully material-driven works she highlights the way that the image comes about – the painting process as a physical repositioning of materials and media. The finished painting is a state or situation that has the potential to communicate another form of motion. In her latest paintings, Lietonen has worked to produce an instability and a skewness that radiate a natural, human warmth. She uses home-made oil paints and fresco to evoke a state of silent, expectant tension.

The exhibition’s title, Wavefolder, is inspired by the audio processor of the same name, which is used in sound synthesis to fold sine waves. This folding augments the “pure” tone with harmonies, as well as a timbre; it acquires a voice or becomes a sound. Different types of wavelengths, sequences and rhythms in humans and nature have been present in the mental work done for the exhibition. Everything from slow geological changes and the cycles of the seasons to the body’s circadian rhythms or waves of emotion. Some elements in the paintings recur, creating rhythms, while other motifs or gestures refer to a wait or a pause, or a moment of wonder. But everything is in motion and everything has a before and an after.

Additive colour mixing also functions as a ripple in the wavelengths of the different colour pigments, while one pervasive, underlying element in Lietonen’s paintings is their variegated brown colour world. She uses brown as a kind of carrier wave in which other colours can exist. In it, the hues can move up to the surface or sink further down. The brownness lacks solidity and is, rather, a tranquil, nebulous zone rich in life. Without anything feeling too prominent or intense, the paintings carry the entire emotional register within brown.

What struck me about Lietonen’s painting is her ability to compose images. She has a feel for the two-dimensional picture plane and its inherent potentials and limitations. The paintings have a value perspective, which holds their emphasis and meaning in clear, simple symbols, proportion, and position. She uses a narrow, predetermined set of components that she positions in such a way that a relationship of tension arises, not just with each other, but with the whole picture surface. This fascinating interplay is reinforced by the way that Lietonen works with a diffuseness or a loosening of the contours. This blurredness evokes a divide; it is as if she has painted the distance between the objects in the picture, which then, like magnetic attraction and repulsion, both pushes apart and pulls together. Her, perhaps at first glance, static paintings are full of life and movement, the contours seem to vibrate with anticipation of another’s touch. But, also, the way that Lietonen combines shapes and brushwork in this brown noise gives the paintings a kinetic, almost bewitching effect. It is as if she teases out a surface tension between painting and viewer; a tipping point into the sensual, and a refraction towards something more spiritual.

Markus Åström
Curator

Eeva Lietonen (b. 1987), lives and works in Helsinki. She graduated with an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki in 2024. Solo exhibitions: house like a moon, tm gallery, Helsinki, 2025; SWIRL, Paja Gallery, Kalasatama, Helsinki, 2022; Karhisaari, Kosminen Gallery, Helsinki, 2021. Group exhibitions (selected): Beyond Matter, Gaa Gallery NYC, 2025; Liminalia, Galerie Anhava, Helsinki, 2024; Vitamix, Pesula Galleria, Sipoo, 2024; Contemporary Art from the North, Carl Hansen & Son, Hamburg, 2023. Lietonen will have a solo exhibition at Turku Art Museum in 2027.

Lietonen is also showing in the Freshly Painted group exhibition (14.5–30.8.2026) at the Sara Hildén Art Museum in Tampere and the Kotka ART biennial (5.6–26.7.2026) in Kotka. Her art is in the collections of the Finnish National Gallery and HAM – Helsinki Art Museum. She is a member of the Finnish Painters’ Union and the Artists’ Association of Finland.

Pro Artibus has received support for the exhibition
The Finnish Heritage Agency, Stiftelsen Tre Smeder, Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland

The artist has been supported by
Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike), Finnish Cultural Foundation, Finnfoam