Summer on Paper

Jenni Hiltunen’s exhibition Summer on Paper paints strong and tense scenes of summer. She depicts this season as being full of light, bright colours and female figures in swimwear – but also shadows, longing and moments of pain. The exhibition focuses on Hiltunen’s lesser-known work: oil paintings on paper from recent years to the present day. Summer on Paper is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Päijät-Häme.

Colours, postures and gestures – coupled with the expressive nature of her work – give the paintings a strong emotional charge. Her imagery revolves around ambiguous female characters who appear bored or reflective, or challenge you with their direct gaze. The pieces explore the world as experienced through a female body and as a young girl in the 1990s: a period coloured by a sense of not belonging and the lack of a role model. The wistful undertones of this youthful pain echo through the characters’ vacant expressions and closed-off gestures, which form a sharp emotional contrast to the season.

Yet summer and youth still flow together into a similar way of being. As a light and fragile material, paper also fits into this same continuum of meaning. The exhibition’s title, Summer on Paper, strengthens this idea of a confluence. It can be read as a play on words that refers to how the paintings have come into being: it’s as if summer has manifested itself on the paper, spreading out as colours and shapes over its porous surface.

So in Jenni Hiltunen’s work, paper and summer share the same attributes. She associates painting on paper with lightness, ease and limitless experimentation. Hiltunen’s painting has an immediacy and sense of carefree virtuosity – her brushstrokes, fast rhythm and sheer enjoyment are evident in her work. The artist and the process therefore become inseparable: “Painting is a way of living. […] I’m searching, striving, thinking though painting,” says Hiltunen.

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Jenni Hiltunen is a Helsinki-based contemporary artist and painter who was born in Hollola in 1981. She is a graduate of both Turku Academy of Fine Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. Hiltunen became known for combining video and painting, but the focus of her work has since clearly shifted towards painting.

She has had numerous group and solo exhibitions both in Finland and abroad. Her works can be found in many private collections, and those of the Finnish State and Finnish Art Society. Galerie Forsblom has been representing the artist since 2010.