Leonor Ruiz Dubrovin’s Soirée is Gallery Elverket’s spring exhibition

This spring, Gallery Elverket is delighted to present the work of visual artist Leonor Ruiz Dubrovin. Soirée, the title of her solo exhibition, evokes parties and social evenings. According to Ruiz Dubrovin the works in the show reflect in fragmentary form stories that are linked with events and sensations experienced at parties. Behind all this is the artist’s long-standing interest in depicting various identities and in contemplating authenticity and the experience of reality. Parties are both private and shared events that leave behind memories and experiences.

Ruiz Dubrovin is interested in using art to generate conversation and debate. She has been working with multiple media for a long time already, with the paintings and sculptures in her exhibitions interlocking to form installations. Nevertheless, that multiplicity goes together with thematicality, since she generally deals with just one theme at a time, but does so in a variety of ways and techniques. The resultant working process produces integrated wholes that are simultaneously cohesive, yet intentionally eclectic. One effect that Ruiz Dubrovin aims at is connected to Tableau vivant, in which scenes are realized using living people. This tradition seamlessly interlinks the arts of theatre and painting.

Soirée has been designed specifically for the exhibition space at Gallery Elverket. Ruiz Dubrovin wanted to construct a coherent body of work in the gallery space, in which the viewer is transported through various scenes and views. She has long been interested in filmic and theatrical ideas, and in how they can be brought into the contemporary-art context. Inspired by film and theatre, she is drawn to fragmentary form that fuses both figurative and abstract ingredients. The presence of different worlds in her works prompts viewers to make free associations and to occupy different times and realities.

Leonor Ruiz Dubrovin’s Soirée is like a kaleidoscope, with the different works all existing in parallel. At the same time, she creates a model of a social stage where various roles and identities are intermingled. In this visual game the diverse time shifts and fluctuating sensations are a part of the exhibition experience – the viewer walks around on the stage, explores visual clues, and ends up being a part of the story. The private soirée that Ruiz Dubrovin has created becomes a shared space where we can spend time and also join in the feeling and atmosphere of the party.

Leonor Ruiz Dubrovin (1978) graduated with an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki in 2008. Soirée is her twelfth solo exhibition. Her works are in the Finnish State, Finnish Art Society and Päivi and Paavo Lipponen collections, and elsewhere. Leonor Ruiz Dubrovin is a member of the Finnish Painters’ Union.

Juha-Heikki Tihinen, PhD