Anu Tuominen - Market
5.2.-21.5.2023
Artist Anu Tuominen’s market is buzzing with activity: tables groan with vibrant fruits and vegetables, the flea market is doing a roaring trade, and the café serves up fresh coffee and ice cream. But is everything as it seems at first glance?
The artworks in this exhibition are made of everyday materials such as colourful beads, plastic mugs, crocheted potholders, zippers, shoehorns, buttons and coins.
Tuominen is a tireless collector who makes art out of natural found objects, flea market finds, and curios that come to her by chance. Any object is potentially an artwork. Tuominen is constantly collecting and storing materials that she transforms into art by combing through, organizing and classifying her vast store of ready-mades.
In Tuominen’s hands, mundane objects undergo a metamorphosis. She plays not only with commonplace objects but also with words and concepts. The titles of her works are laced with clever humour and playfulness. Tuominen’s art is conceptual but never inaccessible.
Anu Tuominen (b. 1961, Lemi) lives and works in Helsinki. She graduated from the Department of Interior Architecture and Furniture Design at the Helsinki University of Art and Design UIAH in 1992 and earned a master’s degree in space and time arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1995. Tuominen is the 2003 winner of Finland’s most prestigious art prize, the Ars Fennica Award, and she won the Mänttä Art Festival Grand Prize in 1995. Her work is represented in all of Finland’s major art collections.