Leena Nio

Leena Nio (1982) is one of the leading contemporary artists and her works are represented in many important galleries and private collections around the world. They can be found, for example, in the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, the Saastamoinen Foundation Collection or the Sara Hildén Art Museum. In the exhibition she presents works from her Comfort Place series, in which she works with the visual, almost haptic captivation of knitted fabric, from which she creates diverse motifs that refer to the layered nature of everyday experience. She portrays the seeming insignificances that we encounter in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, but which inscribe themselves in our own identity and underline the importance of the empirical in human life – hair tangled in knitwear, a newly sewn button or various abrasions and torn, newly sewn threads on a sweater. Sometimes Nio captures a portrait of a button without further narration, other times she captures the fragility of a butterfly’s wings or the story of a racing cyclist in knitwear. The warm, but sometimes scratchy cotton evokes the impression of bodily experience in the viewer. In this way, the artist tests the boundary between the creator and the perceiver and stimulates his imagination. The significance of the work is left in the hands of each viewer with their individual experiences; it is as if the author allowed them to put on the sweater and experience the painted theme for themselves. In Lenna Nio’s paintings, as soft and lyrical as they appear, we experience a profound knowledge of painting technique that gives us an often deceptive experience of knitwear, with which we could easily mistake the presented canvases. Before each series, the author researches the most suitable painting method for processing the given theme, and the painting itself is created detail by detail. Her work with layering and an almost scientific approach to the possibilities of painting and testing its boundaries are the cornerstones of her work, which is very popular (not only) in Finland among collectors and curators of contemporary art.