Join us for to the gallery's first solo exhibition with the Finnish artist Emma Ainala "Not All Flowers Are to be Trusted". The Danish public could first experience Ainala's paintings at the annual Spring Exhibition in 2018 Charlottenborg in Copenhagen. The exhibition was unusual because the selection committee rejected 97% of the submitted work from a total of 618 artists from all over the world, accepting only 19 artists, including the then-29-year-old Emma Ainala. The Danish art critic Peter Michael Hornung, who reviewed the exhibition, wrote: "Emma Ainala with her large psychedelic figure pictures may look like a Finnish version of the Danish artist Kathrine Ærtebjerg, but her figure gallery is more acidic and full to bursting point" This description of her paintings is still valid today.
We find ourselves in a colourful world with feminine figures, flowers in many shades and enigmatic hybrids that act in an almost hypnotic range between submission and assimilation. A myriad of psychological symbols and cultural-historical and mythological references unfold. The interiors and landscapes are lavish and rich in detail. Time is warped, bodies are sometimes detached from their respective heads, and we are at once in "Alice in Wonderland" and "Digi-Disney After Dark", a contradictory scenic universe where everything seems spirited and alive. Objectification is a recurring theme that is emphasized as the fundamental premise in "Not All Flowers Are to be Trusted”. This dogma exceeds her previous exhibitions. We see bodies that merge with and transform into lamps, sofas, and wallpaper. Elements from the exterior such as the sky, animals, angels, snakes, spiders and plants become actors in this theatrical drama. For example, a phenomenon that is evident in the work titled: "Would You Still Love Me, If I Were A Lamp?"
Emma Ainala, (b.1989), lives and works in Savonlinna, Finland and graduated from the Art Academy in Helsinki, in 2013. Significant solo and group exhibitions include CHART Art Fair, Copenhagen, (2022), Hyvinkää Art Museum, Hyvinkää, Finland (2020), Finlandsinstitutets Gallery, Stockholm, (2020), Jyväskylä Art Museum, Jyväskylä, Finland (2019), Mikkeli Art Museum, Mikkeli, Finland (2017) and Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition, Copenhagen, Denmark (2018).
The is exhibition is genourosly supported by:
The Finnish Cultural Institute in Denmark.
