now | here - HDW LIVE

Helsinki Design Week LIVE is kind of a miracle. Shows from Vuokko and Tuomas Laitinen at the same event? Heikki Salonen and Samuji? Someone has worked some tremendous magic behind the scenes.

Not to mention the R/H show and DJ set, not to mention the dulcet tones of Anna Järvinen and Mirel Wagner. See it to believe it.

now | here - Design Market

Five reasons to never, ever miss the Design Market:

1. Amazing design bargains
2. New clothes
3. The designers who bring their clothes and design items there are the ones who care the most about building their business. Know these names, and you know the future of design and fashion in Finland.
4. The chance to meet the designers personally.
5. Amazing design bargains and new clothes

The Design Market will be held at the Cable Factory on the 10th and 11th of September.

clean | laundry - Kaksitvå

The guy above is kind of good-looking, perhaps a little rugged around the edges. Cool sweatshirt, of course -  perhaps a bit of a trim is needed? I'm sure she takes care of him. Because she certainly takes care of herself. That sweater dress by Kaksitvå is one of the necessities of this season and is absolutely destined to become a classic and is available at the Indian Summer Store. We're not sure about the guy.

light | vision - Ilona Sampovaara

The Unhappy Rabbits show at Art Alex Gallery is a study of how guilt can disguise itself as innocence. Ilona Sampovaara's new works tie together themes such as Adam and Eve, playfulness and the cruelty of children.

Ilona is a Finnish artist residing in Mexico, and the works in the gallery show the progression in her themes from the anthropomorphism of dogs to exposing the sins and fragilities of humans through using animals as images. Ilona also uses her paintings as muses in her Victorian-esque jewelry line, the Bug Girl Co. Small glimpses of faces and little objects decorate tempting silver and brass lockets and charm bracelets made with vintage beads and Swarovski crystals.

light | vision - Artist Peter Jones

You need color. Color environments have the power to calm, energize, enrage, entice and inspire you.

Peter Jones' Colourscape is a maze of colored spheres suspended above the ground with ropes. Allow yourself to be yellow for a while, or sit in gray and allow yourself to absorb the blending colors around you. At times the true color is too intense to interpret, and at times you will be soothed like a baby.

Colourscape is part of the Turku European Capital of Culture 2011 program.

light | vision - Artist Vesa-Pekka Rannikko

The Aalto pavilion in Venice as reinterpreted by Vesa-Pekka Rannikko

Vesa-Pekka Rannikko whitewashes architecture, art and the act of displaying art at the Venice Biennale. In the installation "...and all structures are unstable", the familiar Aalto pavilion is covered in a temporary and transient sheath of white boards. Inside, the video shows repainted found paintings, found paintings being painted over in white, and the process of painting the white screen for the video, all overlaid with new color.

Everything becomes white, or even nothing, in the end.  Rannikko calls into question what art and its display really mean, if they mean anything or if it means everything to the work. Does it matter if a painting is whitewashed, or simply repainted? The haunting images of Rannikko's found paintings, which he repainted in black and white, lead us through a new understanding of whitewash.

Unknown (2010) by Vesa-Pekka Rannikko. Repainted found painting in black and white

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