Maija Närhinen’s exhibition, seen at Hippolyte Studio, concentrates solely on contents, i.e. on something what is held inside and cut from its environment by a certain form. The exhibition consists of a single installation streching from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. It is a compilation of cutting forms – empty cardboard boxes nested within each other until there is no empty space left.

The work is a game between the contradictions of full and empty. In this collection of boxes each of them finds a perfect place according to its size. Empty boxes inside each other create new content as they form a labyrinth-like surface where a single box disappears into the mass. The material of the work is the opposite of a valuable collectible, but the work evokes questions of collecting. Is a collection ever meant to be finished or is the act of acquiring more important?

In her artistic work Maija Närhinen creates mainly three-dimensional pieces and installations. In her work she often combines different methods of depiction, for example both three and two-dimensional elements, in one piece. “My installations are large entities made up of countless small pieces. As building blocks I use ready-made objects and parts of images, like map pages. My collage-like pieces, built of images, have often had a connection to questions of the amount of images in our environment, and how they might depict it.”

Maija Närhinen graduated with an MA from the Academy of Fine Arts at the University of the Arts, Helsinki. Her latest solo exhibitions were in 2015 at the Kouvola Art Museum and in Helsinki at MUUgallery. Her works have been seen in group exhibitions in 2015 e.g. in London at the Royal British Society of Sculptors Gallery as a part of Skulptur – a show presenting Nordic sculpture, as a part of Turku Biennial at the Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova Museum and the University of Arts’ Research Pavilion in connection to the Venice Biennale. Maija Närhinen’s works are a part of the collections of Helsinki Art Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Rovaniemi Art Museum, University of Helsinki, Nordiska Akvarellmuseet and Finnish Art Society. Currently Maija Närhinen is preparing her doctoral thesis at the Academy of Fine Arts. www.maijanarhinen.fi

The exhibition has been supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.

28 April – 21 May 2017
MAIJA NÄRHINEN
Content

Hippolyte Studio
Yrjönkatu 8–10 courtyard, 00120 Helsinki
+358 9 612 33 44, www.hippolyte.fi
Opening hours: Tue–Fri 12–5 pm, Sat–Sun 12–4 pm

image: Maija Närhinen, detail from the installation Content, 2017