Taidehalli Häme presents works from Sanna Kananoja’s new painting series “Half-Year Mountains”, in which she examines the relationship between the starting point and the painting process through repetition in her photographic-based work. Each work in the series has exactly the same starting point, a photograph of a snowdrift. This image represents self-evident, functional, built on human terms and accepted everyday nature. Kananoja uses egg tempera as her technique

“Half-Year Mountains” deals with local nature, focusing on the repetition of everyday life, the similarity of days and moments. The difference between looking at and seeing things is clear on a familiar road. The subject is ordinariness: its safety, invisibility and unquestionableness. Roads and their sides mean an enormous amount of land cultivation. Rocks are blasted, trees are felled, the earth is dug up and the flow of water is controlled. Most of the Earth’s land surface has already been changed by humans. The small piece of land surface that appears in Kananoja’s works represents this larger phenomenon. The starting point of the painting series are systematic views created as a result of necessity – the snowdrifts by the roadside. They typify the landscape for up to half a year. Small mountain formations rise up in the flat landscape, continuing for kilometers one after another, identical. Heaps formed by machines, born, grown, melted at the same time, and brown when spring comes. Snowdrifts are not only snow but also gravel, sand, salt and debris.

The landscapes in Kananoja’s works are not always thought of as real nature in everyday life, but rather as part of an environment constructed by human practice. In his paintings, the situation is reversed – in them the viewer sees nature, it takes on an intrinsic meaning, and everyday environments become ideal landscapes for a moment. During the Romantic period, man was depicted as small in the presence of great natural forces, for example on the top of a lonely mountain. In his works, Kananoja presents the same with everyday elements: man does his actions in order to control himself, nature seeks its own path, being large, wild and unpredictable even when small.

Repetition creates routine and leads to boredom as Kananoja focuses on the same sketch photograph for a long time. The subject becomes secondary but at the same time underlined. Change and immutability are constantly present in the works in the series. They highlight the control and uncontrollability of the painting process, where the goal is always to start over.

Sanna Kananoja (b.1979 Pirkkala) lives and works in Oulu. She graduated from the Turku Academy of Arts as a visual artist in 2010. Kananoja’s works have been exhibited in numerous private and group exhibitions. She is a member of the Finnish Painters’ Association and the Oulu and Turku artists’ societies. Kananoja’s works are in the art collections of, among others, the state, the city of Turku, the Oulu and Tampere Art Museums, the University of Helsinki and the University Hospital of Helsinki.

The completion of the exhibition has been supported by Taike and SKR Pohjois-Ohjanmaa.

Links:
sannakananoja.net