Kaarina kaikkonen biography books

z2o Sara Zanin Gallery is pleased to present the third solo show by the Finnish artist Kaarina Kaikkonen.

Kaikkonen’s alphabet is composed of fragments of everyday stories and existence, which, like minute pieces of a large mosaic, form a universally recognizable language.

These fragments are everyday discarded clothes and objects that bear the traces of their previous lives, silent witnesses of a story. Shirts, shoes, jackets and cutlery become monuments to past existences and trustees of traditional social, ethical and political values in communication with the environment in which they return to life.

Apparently fragile as a cloth fluttering in the wind, Kaarina Kaikkonen’s work is starched and stiffened until it attains the solidity of a weighty monument, resisting in time and space. The clothes are a sensitive film that separate and, at the same time, relate the human being to the surrounding environment, propagating the individual’s identity in societ

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NO SHIRTS NO STORIES Kaarina Kaikkonen designating the centrality of mode in relation to individual and collective experiences Doron Beuns 8-6-2015

My current studies at The Amsterdam mode Institute, my preoccupation with contemporary art and befriending professionals in the realms of fine arts has been causing dialogue about the appropriation of garments within artworks. Encountering Deleuzian philosophy in this recent year of studies sparked even more interest in theoretically investigating this struktur of appropriation. A few months ago I was scrolling down my Pinterest page until I got surprised bygd seeing an overwhelming amount of empty suspended shirts. Seeing the artwork and reading the title “Are we still going on?” prompted thinking about my personal relation to garments opposed to society’s relation to garments. It fryst vatten exactly my fascination for how artworks constructed out of mundane objects can affect our emotional, conceptual and physical mechanisms. inom am interested i

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Are We Still Going On?

Kaarina Kaikkonen

February 26, 2012 – April 21, 2013

Conceived specifically for the former factory of Max Mara fashion company, now housing the Collezione Maramotti, the large installation Are We Still Going On? by Kaarina Kaikkonen follows and accompanies the compositional structure of the building, an interesting example of brutalist and organicist architecture from the 1950’s.

The old entrance to the factory − where the artwork was created − is ideally divided into two areas; the horizontal beams in reinforced concrete linking the pillars, not only provide the space with an architectural rhythm, but also become part of the artist’s work.

The installation is composed of two symmetrical structures evoking the skeleton of a large boat. The plain hull is subdivided into two sections developing from the ceiling down to touching the floor, with the same half-circular compositional rhythm created with garments tied and knotted together. As for the colou