Heini Aho creates art in which the analytical meets the intuitive, the material is entwined with the intangible. Based on observations and the laws of materials, her works offer alternative, insightful interpretations of reality. They are infused by the characteristic subtle undertone of her art: a flash of humour, joyous wonder at life, a surprising sense of freedom inspired by ordinary things.

Built in the Studio space in the Turku Art Museum, Cure of All is a visualisation that allows the audience to examine acts of rotation, expectation, excitation and release through the media of installation, video, motion, light and sound. The key piece of the exhibition, Everyday Revolutions (2018) consists of stiff cords hanging from the ceiling that are twined around themselves and have a rotating object at their lower end. It is a kind of temporal installation in which objects rotate in their individual ways, twisting and clanking at random, some of them gradually unwinding and showing the viewer only a small fraction of the process at a time.

The passage of time is measured and defined through rotation. In Aho’s constructed world, the cord in tension is a metaphor of time, an inexorably moving force, whereas the hanging object is like the artist or the viewer, and the floor below the environment in which we are all present. Alongside everyday existence and motion, Everyday Revolutions also depicts unavoidable sudden twists, losses of balance and states of renewal. The combination of meditativeness and tranquillity with instances of sudden motion is like a reminder of the uncertainty of life, of moments when we live our lives relaxed yet prepared for anything.

Heini Aho (b. 1979) graduated from the Turku Arts Academy in 2003 and from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2015. She lives and works in Turku. Aho’s works combine elements of sculpture, installation, moving image and performance. She is a member of the international artist collective Videokaffe. Her most recent solo exhibitions have been at Galerie Anhava, Titanik Gallery and Forum Box in Finland. She has works in the collections of Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Saastamoinen Foundation, and the Finnish State Art Collection. In 2016, the Finnish Art Society awarded Aho the main prize of the William Thuring Foundation. www.heiniaho.com

This exhibition is generously supported by Finnish Copyright Society Kuvasto/Erik Enroth Memorial Prize, Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, and Arts Promotion Centre Finland.