ART 41 BASEL

GALERIE ANHAVA AT ART 41 BASEL

Art 41 Basel Galerie Anhava is proud to present works by the following Nordic artists:

Anne-Karin Furunes (Norway)
Matti Kujasalo (Finland)
Elina Merenmies (Finland)
Jorma Puranen (Finland)
Marko Vuokola (Finland)

Anne-Karin Furunes (born 1961) is a Norwegian painter known for her works employing perforation technique. Based on photographs, these pieces have a black or white canvas perforated by the artist in imitation of the screen of a photograph. On the one hand, Furunes’s works are paintings dwelling in light, while on the other hand they express the authenticity and intensity of early beautiful monochrome photographs. Recent exhibitions include participation in the exhibition “Slash – Paper Under the Knife” at the Museum of Art and Design in New York (2009-10), and at the Kiasma museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki (2008). The artist’s solo show at Trondheim Art Museum will open in June 2010.

Matti Kujasalo (born 1946 in Finland) has been working consistently in concrete art over thirty years. He is the most important systematic constructivist in Finland and the only one with a very special poetic quality. The artist has developed a very specific system yet he continuously finds new areas of freedom within the self-imposed boundaries. With the usual reduction down to few colours Kujasalo achieves a surprising richness of form and variety in his compositions. The works engage the viewer’s gaze and provoke his imagination. Recent participations include Eskilstuna Art Museum in Sweden. Forthcoming exhibitions include the exhibition “Mirrors of Continuous Change” curated by Fré Ilgen for Taekwang Industries in Seoul, South Korea.

Finnish painter Elina Merenmies (born 1967) uses traditional drawing techniques. Masterfully done minute inks on paper have variety of subjects from nuns to sailors. She combines elements of fear and beauty and hovers between contradictory concepts such as good and evil, unreal and real. The figures in her portraits are not necessarily from this world but still they deal with basic human issues. Recent exhibition include a solo show at the Nordic Watercolour Museum, and a group exhibition in Eskilstuna Art Museum. Future exhibitions include solo shows at Kristianstads Kunsthalle in Sweden in 2010 and South Jutland Museum of Art in Denmark in 2011.

Jorma Puranen’s (born 1951) conceptually intriguing works address the questions of history and representation through innovative visual methods. At Art Basel Galerie Anhava will also present the artist’s most recent works from 2009 of light reflected on historical portrait paintings in his ongoing series “Shadows, Reflections and All That Sort of Thing”. The artist’s solo show at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Lille is currently open, and a solo show at EMMA Museum of Modern Art in Espoo, Finland will open in October 2010. Jorma Puranen has recently been nominated for the Ars Fennica Prize 2010 in Finland.

Marko Vuokola (born 1967 in Finland) is a meditative artist, particularly interested in issues of seeing, perception, knowledge and time. He addresses and studies them with works that may technically be photographs, videos, objects or even watercolour paintings. He chooses a method that can be applied to investigating the question at hand and follows it uncompromisingly. The final work is filtered out of the acquired material through elimination and selection. Recent exhibitions include participation in a group show at the Kukje Gallery in Seoul, and a public commission at the University of Turku as part of the artist group OLO.