Taidemaalariliitto

 

PULP examines how power is constructed through performance: how gestures, roles, and repeated displays create the appearance of strength. At the moment of appearance, the tension between the audience and the performer becomes legible, as expectation and exposure meet. Here, power is not only performed but produced by looking. The viewer’s gaze becomes part of the choreography, a force that shapes the scene as much as the bodies within it.

This shift in tempo, created by pausing the scene, makes visible the ritualistic nature of these actions, echoing the repeated drills of wrestling, boxing, and other forms of physical performance. Through the process of disconnecting and translating fragments of popular media, the scenes become sites for reimagining allegories of conflict, authority, and vulnerability.

In PULP, the artist mines reanimated images, including Finnish films from the 1930s-60s, archival news footage, and advertising imagery, to examine power as performance. Stopped frames of boxers,
dancers, and players reveal the choreography of attack and defense. The spectacle is paused, exposing the mechanics of display and the moment when performance fractures into something real.

 

 

 

Meri Toivanen (b. 1996, Finland) explores the shifting borderlines of figuration through a painting process that reinterprets cinematic imagery. Her work examines the symbolism of power; drawing on events, encounters, and staged situations that emerge from the dynamics of play and performance.

Toivanen turns to Finnish film history as a visual archive, isolating cinematic fragments from their cultural context to generate reframed perspectives. These images undergo further transformation through her material approach, which centers on oil painting alongside a range of artist-made drawing media. Through this process of translation and disconnection, the scenes become sites for reimagining allegories of conflict, authority, and vulnerability.

Meri Toivanen graduated with an MFA in Painting from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp in 2022. She has exhibited her work in Belgium, Luxembourg, Finland, and Denmark, including at Aine Art Museum, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, and galleries such as de boer, Hioco Delany, and Annie Gentils. Her work has been recognized with multiple awards, including the Young Artist Grant from the Finnish Art Society, the Prize of the Drawing Teachers in 2021 and 2022, and the Marianne van Vyve Prize in 2022.