Checkpoint Leonardo
March 15th – April 28th, Holvi, Lower Gallery
Terike Haapoja, Päivi Hintsanen, Jeanette Schäring
Checkpoint Leonardo is an exhibition project that researches the interplay of art and science. This project is a collaboration between the Jyväskyä Art Museum, the University of Jyväskylä’s Department of Teacher Education, and the Live Herring workgroup. This exhibition, in the Museum’s lower gallery, is composed of three art projects which exploit scientific means. Jeanette Schäring’s Submersive Aquagarden uses natural dyes to reveal pollution and chemicals in water samples. In Päivi Hintsanen’s Copper Rust Herbs, corroding ”metal plants” imitate the life cycle of plants and flowers. Terike Haapoja uses a heat-sensitive camera in her piece IN AND OUT OF TIME, which reflects, among other things, on a being’s time after its death. After Jyväskylä, the exhibition will tour to Tampere, Oulu and possibly in Joensuu as well.
Terike Haapoja (s. 1974) is an artist from Helsinki. She holds master’s degrees from both the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and the Theatre Academy. Haapoja is currently writing her Doctorate at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. The study looks at the influences of science, technology and environmental ethics, in art. Her work employs new technologies, such as a carbon meter and network technology along with different scientific devices which serve as means to reflect on basic questions about life, memory, our relationship with nature, and death. ”We tend to put things of nature into one box, and things of culture and technology and science into another, but there really is no such division. Science or technology is not separate from nature, any more than nature is separate from technologies, intelligence or cognition.”
Päivi Hintsanen (s. 1970) is an artist from Jyväskylä who is best known in the art world for her pigment-ink prints and her media-based artwork, but she also has a long history with colour. Hintsanen manages an extensive, information based, website on colour, Coloria, and has been involved in many colour related projects. For some of her side projects, she experiments with different pigments and colouring materials. These experiments have often evolved into artistic projects such as her Copper Rust Herbs. ”Working with colour always sends me into the rabbit hole, where everything I do is opposite to my usual habits: digital becomes analogue, typing on the computer becomes hands-on work, carefully thought out plans become coincidence and chance. Colour materials are inspired by uncontrolled processes which are practically impossible to repeat a second time.”
Jeanette Schäring (1963 Borås, Sweden) completed her Masters of Fine Arts at the Gothenburg University in 2006. She is an artist and a researcher/specialist of natural dyes. Sweden has a long tradition of natural dyes use but much has been forgotten over the years. That is why Schäring has been around the world travelling, among other places, to Finland, Pakistan, Egypt and Thailand in search for recipes, clues and answers that are sometimes centuries old. "I am working with material – matter and natural dye for its unlimited possibilities and I am interested in the physical dialogue between the matter and myself."