Suhina
Jenni Rope
Galerie Forsblom, February 15–March 17, 2019
Galerie Forsblom’s new exhibition featuring Jenni Rope (b. 1977) showcases a combination of her abstract paintings and mobile sculptures. Rope’s playful forms come about through chance and experimentation. She works intuitively, trusting accident and serendipity to lead her to new discoveries. Her lightweight mobiles are polystyrene cutouts, her creative process being guided by the material: Rope especially enjoys it when the cutter encounters an obstacle, creating accidental bumpy imperfections in the silhouette. Her acrylic paintings revel in dynamic tensions between the broad, rhythmic strokes of her dry brush and multiple layers of paint, the space of the painting being sandwiched between layers of color. Light and shadow play upon the uneven textures, creating shimmering contrasts that are accentuated and enlivened with spray-paint highlights.
Rope’s organic forms evoke impressions of human life, plants and natural phenomena, sometimes combined human-made structures. Rope is intrigued by synesthetic fusions of images, sounds, and words. She sees movements of wind and water captured in her brushwork and imagines whispering, rustling, and rumbling sounds flowing from the canvas. Movement is a key element also in her mobiles, which sway gently in a meditative rhythm. In their emphatic spatiality, these floating, spinning creations are the perfect companions to Rope’s paintings. They are like three-dimensional ever-fluctuating paintings that can be viewed from 360°.
Rope is a versatile artist who also works as a print designer and creator of art books and public artworks. Originally trained as a graphic designer, Rope has designed prints for clients including Marimekko. She is the founder of flipbook publisher Napa Books, and she has created visuals for art and picture books for WSOY, Etana Editions, and Rooftop Press. Her public artworks can be viewed at the Helsinki University Library (Kaisa House) and the Kalasatama Health and Wellbeing Center in Helsinki. She is the 2016 winner of the Finnish Art Society’s William Thuring Prize.