2016 MARCH

Jenni Yppärilä

For the past few years Jenni Yppärilä has concentrated on portraying the Finnish built environment with her signature three-dimensional painting technique.

The buildings presented in Yppärilä’s project Was Here are common-looking places within their local environments, present in the everyday lives of local people. They are places that might seem mundane to the eye of a trespasser, such as gas stations and weathered corners of neighborhood groceries, but they also have alternate functions as social gathering points for different kinds of communities.

Indeed, the name of the project points to personal attachments and social histories. Marks of these presences, tagged walls and deteriorated structures, visualize the layers of "been-theres" that transform buildings, corridors and corners into lived environments.

On the other hand, Yppärilä’s paintings document cityscape in times of change. The paintings arouse a sense of relief that these places still exist – followed by a sense of disbelief. Certainly some of them have already been abandoned, maybe even bulldozed to make space for something new and shiny.

Jenni Yppärilä: Siilo (Oulu), 2015, three-dimensional painting, 51x95x36cm.

Jenni Yppärilä is FCINY’s artist-in-residence in March 2016. Until now, Yppärilä’s work has been focused exclusively on buildings in Finnish municipalities. During her one-month residency Yppärilä will take note and make sketches of locations where New York City locals go about their daily routines. By juxtaposing these locations, so easily taken for granted, perhaps both could be seen from new perspectives.

http://www.fciny.org/residency/sandra-nyberg
http://www.fciny.org/residency/marja-kanervo
http://www.fciny.org/residency/santtu-mustonen