Taidemaalariliitto

 

In my exhibition ”Between Two Looks”, I present woodcuts and paintings created in parallel, exploring the encounter and interaction between pairs of works.

In recent years, I have worked intensively with woodcut. I have been searching for my own form of expression, a way of making woodcuts, experimenting with scale and presentation practices.

My longing to paint and my desire to find a more painterly approach to my woodcuts brought these two techniques together. I strive for open play and exploration between these techniques in the construction of the image and the creative process. For me, painting requires spontaneous instinctiveness and sensitive presence. It is a layered process of searching and finding through mistakes. The process of creating a woodcut is linear. The technique and material set limitations and challenges. The work is done in mirror image, and colours are only added at the proofing stage. Carving birch plywood is slow and physical. I often roll all the ink-colours on the same printing plate and print a unique woodcut on paper by hand.

The works in the exhibition “Between Two Looks” approach discourse and interpret interfaces: internal and physical, dream and wakefulness, imagination and reality, exterior and interior, presence and absence, front and back, physical and spiritual. However, it is always a question of what lies between two spaces or two views.

It is interesting to see how my long-term work with woodcut printing has influenced my painting and what painting brings to my new woodcuts. I feel that this is the beginning of something new, and its continuation can be seen at the Porvoo Art Hall in spring 2026.

 

Noora Nio-Juss (born 1976 in Helsinki) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki, with MFA in painting in 2017. She graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2000 as a BA in painting. Noora Nio-Juss has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions both in Finland and abroad. Her most recent solo exhibitions were at Forum Box Gallery 2023, Turku Art Hall 2021, Galleria Sculptor 2020 and Tallinn Art Hall 2019. She was awarded the William Thuring Prize in 2021, and she was a nominee for the Queen Sonja Print Award of Norway in 2020. Noora is a member of the Finnish Painters’ Association and the Finnish Woodcarvers’ Society. Her works are in the collections of Finnish National Gallery, HAM Helsinki Art Museum, Paulo Foundation, City of Mänttä, Tampere Art Museum, HUS Art Collection and private collections.

 

Arts Promotion Centre Finland and Finnish Cultural Foundation Uusimaa Fund have supported the exhibition.

 

Finnish Painters` Union pays artists an exhibition fee. A state subsidy has been received from the Finnish Heritage Agency for the payment of the fees.