Artist Statement

“I feel that important events happen in a person’s life, chapters and situations in life that tell me about the life we’re living right now. These situations tell me so much about how people care about each other, how they care about themselves, and what things feel like to them at any given moment. I’m interested in all of those little moments in which we face each other, for example when we’re face-to-face and silent, and how we’re present to each other in different situations. I’m interested in the gaze of living beings, and the thoughts behind that gaze. I try to capture those thoughts using photography, and I usually call that thought a feeling”.

Captured through her unique viewpoint, Marika Pentikäinen photographs emotions. Her portraits are human landscapes, focused on the small gestures of human interactions- sometimes loud, wild and free, at other times quiet and contemplative-each image exploring the person within and allowing them to simply be as they are.

The people she photographs are a constant inspiration, especially the parts of a person which can’t be easily seen such as human destinies, relationships, tension, thoughts and feelings. She is intrigued by the human mind’s range of emotions, and whether shooting in a studio setting or location it is always her intention to convey what is felt in the moment; be it happiness and love, or sadness, longing and hate.

Pentikäinen lives between Singapore, US and Finland, using photography as her visual medium to write the world for people to see; her work is a wordless, creative and passionate form of communication between people and different perspectives.

Education

2015 Helsinki Desing school, Photography, FIN

2015 Street Photography, David Julian, Alan Lawrence, SEA, US

2016 Portraits, Scott Kelby, SEA, US

2017 Family Portraits, Jackie Jean, SEA,US 2017 Learning Lighting, Kyle Chan, TAC, US

2017 Bellevue College, Photography, SEA, US

2017 PhotoCenter NW, Wetplate, Danielle Carillo, SEA, US

2017 PhotoCenter NW, Natural Light, Bethanie Mitchell, SEA, US

2019 Objectifs Centre for Photography & Film, Street Photography, Sha Ying, SIN

Exhibitions

2016 City Panorama, Photographic Centre NW, Photomural, SEA, US

2018 Bemis Arts Spring Show, SEA, US

2018 The Punch project, Barnstrom, ELLESBURG, US

2020 Mads Milano, Dream Room, MILAN, IT

2020 Mads Milano,Breakout, MILAN, IT

2020 Rossocinabro Gallery, ROMA, IT

2021 MAMAG Modern Art Museum, Austria, AT

Publications

2018 Salan Art Magazine 1st Edition, US

2019 Inside Artists 17st Edition, London, UK

2020 Contemporary Art Curator 2020 The Great Masters of Contemporary Art book, Roma, IT

Awards

2017 IPA, Honorable Mention, Poetry, US, ASIA

2017 IPA, Honorable Mention, Birth, US, ASIA

2018 ONE EYELAND, Bronze, Freedom Of Water, US, ASIA

2018 PRIX DE LA PHOTOGRAPHE, Bronze, Freedom Of Water, PARIS

2018 TIFA, Honorable Mention, Freedom Of Water, TOKYO

2019 MIFA, Honorable Mention, Freedom Of Water, MOSCOW

Alexandra Kapogianni-Beth, art historian and sculptor, has been producing objects for 15 years now but had been busy painting and drawing before that time. For some seven years she’s mainly been busy with sculpting.

Since 1998 she has attended many art and sculpting courses in and out of Germany. In 2017 she started a sculpting course at the Institut für Ausbildung in Bildender Kunst und Kunsttherapie (IBKK) in Bochum, West Germany.

„For my pieces of art I use a wide range of raw materials and I approache each project with an unrestricted view, making use of the perspectives of a Greek artist now living in Germany. My own experience here and there, and the unique histories of both countries force and allow me to choose and connect what I assume to serve my intentions best.

When considering my objects, I’m focussed on turning dead materials, as hard rock or soft matter as gypsum and clay, into something vivid that offers a contrast between unhewn surfaces with soft flowing worked surfaces. Greek history over the millennia offers a wide range of impulses. Heroism beyond human limits and multitudes of mythological actors, and all their visualisation by other artists, find their way into the sculptures that I design and produce. The delight I enjoy, hopefully finds its way to the beholders and stimulate their reflections of what they see and experience.“

Curriculum Vitae

Born in Hohenlimburg, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

1998 – 2000 Private school education in art history, lessons in drawing and painting at the Eorgon Technis, Athens, Greece

2001 – 2008 Studies of art history at the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany

2003 First sculptures

since 2012 Courses in stone carving, studio seminars und art symposia

since 2017 Sculpting study course at the Institut für Ausbildung in Bildender Kunst und Kunsttherapie (IBKK), Bochum-Wattenscheid, Germany

Exhibitions & Fairs I always agonize over how we could gain the power to live more and how we could endure our life more. I am producing my works, thinking that we need a buttress whereby we can keep us safe from the dam collapsing every moment in this violent world. My works are about the methodology for such themes. I express my themes through the persona ‘A’(ah). For example, ‘A’ takes us all to the forest that serves to rehabilitate the nature we have lost. The forest is a space free from the law of physics. There, numerous beings co-exist only to die after all, while other numerous beings are born anew. Our human beings will get relieved within the nature embracing everything, staring at the cycling life. Not only the forest awaits us. ‘A’ will also take us all to the flowing air filled with the invisible and innumerable grains, the sea where the universe flows, the earth upon which we stand, leaves, and others. ‘A’ will talk about the reasons why we should keep our vital power and life.

Award

2015 Eland Cultural Foundation The first time art college artist chosen for the contest

Private exhibition

2018 Start Vocation, CICA museum, Gyeonggi-do 2

016 arc, Alpha Gallery, Seoul

Group exhibition

2021 NordArt 2021, NordArt, Büdelsdorf (soon)

2018 NEW-AGE ART, ALLME ARTSPACE, Seoul

2017 A Research on Feminist Art Now, Space one, Seoul

2017 New Sensation, Eland space, Seoul

2015 Born of Art Museum, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art front, Seoul

2015 Nevertheless, Alpha Gallery, Seoul

2014 Gravity, Alpha Gallery, Seoul 2013 New Thinking, New Art, Lee Seoul gallery, Seoul

2012 Face to Face, Kim's Art Field museum, Busan

2010 5me展, ohoo gallery, Seoul

2010 4 symbols of element, Namsan gallery, Seoul

Art Fair

2016 ASSYAF, Dongdaemun Design plaza (DDP), Seoul

2015 SPOON ART FAIR, HMA Hongik Museum of Art, Seoul

2011 ASSYAF, HMA Hongik Museum of Art, Seoul

Graduate

Deokwon Art High school Fine art Sungshin Women's University Fine art

Critic

“They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.” (Hermann Hesse)

In 1899 Sigmund Freud published "The Interpretation of Dreams", one of his best known works based on the psychoanalytic theory. The study of dreamlike activity focuses attention on the prevalence of the unconscious over reason. Psychoanalysis influenced the scientific and cultural sphere of the twentieth century, becoming one of the basic theories for the development of Surrealism. However, the theme of the dream has always interested the artists: "El sueño de la razón produces monstruos" is a famous work by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes that belongs to the seventeenth-century series of Los Caprichos. On the contrary, for the artist Marika Pentikäinen the dream of reason produces works of ephemeral beauty, where the unconscious emerges with a sense of rediscovered freedom. "Freedom of Water, Levity" is the photographic analysis of the dreamlike human psyche, the only condition in which you can experience an absolute independence from the superego. The naked body is free from rational conventions and it is immersed in the sea, a symbol of freedom and inner depth, purification and lightness. In her works Marika Pentikäinen shows a constant interest in the human condition and she portrays it through photography, aimed not at the outer world but at the inner world. The artist says: "In my photoghraphs and especially in this series, seeing people in their most natural state, together with the natural element of water, is important to me, as is the fact that my subjects can be free. Free to be themselves exactly as they are in their own perfection ". The return to human instinct and essence reveals the perfection of human nature in its physical and moral nakedness in a work that recalls the image of a fetus in the womb, ready for a new rebirth. Water is the element necessary for life and the regeneration of nature, through the creative act. Photography as an artistic language becomes a universal language that speaks of feelings, positive and negative emotions that give voice to the human soul, to its being and its continuous becoming. Art curator Elisabetta Scaccia

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Whiff

fine art on paper

54 x 36 cm

with frame 65 x 46 cm