Susanna Vuorio: Once upon a time there was a life, tm•gallery 18.11.-5.12.2020

My exhibition consists of paintings where the human figures are in everyday situations, eating, at home, at work, in the courtyard. The situations come from life, they are things I have experienced myself or seen.

The people in my paintings are anonymous, unknown, they are born from my head when I paint, without planning. My intention is not to copy reality like a photograph or like we want to see it in glossy pictures. Through straightforward, physical painting I try to narrate and bring forth some things about life that are maybe impossible to say otherwise.

For my previous solo exhibition I painted works where people were maybe moving more in public spaces – in a grocery store, at hairdresser’s, in the street. This time I have been dealing more with just being human, loneliness, selfishness, independence and the loss of it. I have done, for example, paintings about eating. All people either eat or are fed. When you are at home, you are free to just be. The society, however, expects and sometimes forces you to accomplish things (“To-Do List”) and there may be successes and catastrophic failures, and finally losses (“Euthanasia”) that my words cannot reach.

Susanna Vuorio