Private view Friday 6 October 2023, 17.00–22.00.
Opening hours Friday–Sunday 13.00–16.00 until 22 October 2023.
Gotlandsgatan 76, Stockholm. Bus 3 and 76 to Gotlandsgatan or metro to Skanstull.
Weird wishes or fishes, who knows? Your attention is all over the place. Do yourself a favour and write it down. Write whatever goes on in your head. Here’s a pen, here’s a piece of paper. You ready? Good. Fold the paper and slip it into one of these banks. Now go on with your life and forget whatever you wrote about.
When you feel like you’re ready, smash the bank. Smash all the banks.
The Weird Wishes exhibition in Candyland by Ninni Luhtasaari features her latest works in ceramics and hand embroidery.
She is a primitive entertainer. Her ceramic sculptures invite closer looks because they are dripping with water. The lumpy fountains are confused since they can’t control their oozing anymore. The figures just have to find ways to deal with the situation. Sometimes with their fists.
Leakiness indicates weakness, and that’s scary. By demonstrating the drizzle of bodily fluids, Luhtasaari is taking a stand on whose bodies are allowed to be vulnerable and free from societal pressures.
She pictures dreamy faces with thread, sequin and glass beads. Her hand embroidered works include melting sceneries, awkward moments and seducing details. With primal characters Luhtasaari is blurring the made-up line between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom.
“At a tender age I fell in love with bad taste. Now I’m appropriating the most surreal elements of kitsch. I’m not willing to draw a straight line. I would rather let it wander in all the shades of pink. I’m all about shame, acceptance, bafflement, subconscious, animality, guts, intuition and LOVE.”
Ninni Luhtasaari (b. 1987) works with hand embroidered contemporary textile art and ceramic fountain sculptures. The Tampere-based artist has exhibited in multiple solo and group shows in Finland, Berlin and Munich. Her works are in private collections around the world and in the collections of the Finnish museum of modern art Kiasma, Tampere Art Museum, City of Kangasala and Helsinki Art Museum (HAM). During the year 2023 she finished her second public art commission, a ceramic relief installation for a school in Kangasala.
Her long term dream is to create a contemporary art water park for the public.
Ninni Luhtasaari is invited by Mattias Larson, mattias[at]candyland.se
Candyland’s exhibition programme is supported by the Swedish Arts Council and City of Stockholm.
PRESS IMAGES
