16.5.-7.9.2008 Holvi

Summer Guests

The Jyväskylä Centre for Printmaking’s International Guests

Vadim Brodsky (1945) from Russia has been a regular guest at the Jyväskylä Centre for Printmaking since 1996. Although Brodsky has lived in Stuttgart, Germany since 1998, his artistic roots come from his birth-town of St. Petersburg and its multilayered history. His lithographs, drawings and watercolours show the St. Petersburg of the Tsars, portrayed as refined and contained.

American artists Dean Dass (1955) is currently a professor at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. In 1997, Dass taught Finnish art students at the Printmaking Centre. His mixed media work is loaded with allusions which can be very personal but which also take a political stand. In this exhibition he presents the series Mnemosyne. Mnemosyne is the personification of memory in Greek mythology, who by Zeus, gives birth to the Muses.

In 1985, American professor Karen Kunc (1949) gave a single-plate, colour woodcut course in Jyväskylä through which many Finnish painters discovered printmaking. Later, Kunc invited several Finnish artists to the University of Nebraska, and organized an extensive exhibition of Finnish woodcut prints, which travelled throughout the United States. Although Karen Kunc’s colourful works are visually abstract, you can also find a concern for humanity and for natural balance, in her work.

Brian Maguire (1951) is one of Ireland’s most well known painters. In the year 2000 he was named professor of the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. Humanity and social commitment have brought him to visit jails and displaced children. Meeting these people has also given him the subject matter for his works of art, which are often portraits. In addition to painting, Maguire also makes lithographs, drawings as well as videos and photographs. This exhibition shows two of his lithograph prints.

Scottish artist Keith McIntyre (1959) teaches at the University of Northumbria in Newcastle. He is a multidisciplinary artist who also works with theatre and dance. With the interests of a stage designer, he creates his own world, in which reality pleasantly mixes with the artificial. McIntyre’s digital print series Ugly Sister and Scottish Dances are like hilariously shameless scenes from a farce. He proves that art does not have to be serious; it can also make you laugh.

Ibrahim Miranda(1969) is one of Cuba’s most renowned artists. His work often includes geographical maps and especially maps of his home country. On the maps he adds images from history, the bible, and common images from the world of plants and animals. His prints are many layered studies combining woodcut, silkscreen, painting and drawing. He also works with the form of the Cuban island changing it into a crocodile or an unidentifiable being, which struggles forward.

Estonian artist Priit Pärn (1946) worked in Jyväskylä in the late ‘80’s. Her first animation was made during the Soviet occupation of Estonia. In 1994 she began work as the artistic director at the Turku University of Applied Arts and Media. Apart from animation, Pärn also makes caricatures, prints and charcoal drawings. Her imagery is characteristically absurd, self-ironic and full of hidden meaning in which common sense is futile. Amongst her work shown in this exhibition is the animation Karl and Marilyn (2003) in which a fame-weary Karl Marx meets the desperate celebrity seeking Marilyn Monroe.

In 1990 the Japanese printmaker Takashi Tanaka(1948) gave a silk-screening course at the Printmaking Centre, for a group of Finnish artists. He is now a professor at the University of Kurashiki. His specialty is photography based silk-screening. He will often create small-scale models of still life scenes, which he photographs and then prepares in separate screens for each of the four primary colours. He is predominantly interested in space and the perception of depth.

Jyväskylä Art Museum Holvi
Kauppakatu 23
tel. (014) 626 856
Open Tue–Sun at 11­–18.