Inka Bell is known as an artist who pushes the boundaries of printmaking, with a practice focused on the experimental combination and use of different materials and techniques. She draws inspiration from the traditions of Minimalism, Constructivism, and Kinetic Art, combining them with her own distinctive sense of playfulness and insight.
Bell explores the relationship between two- and three-dimensionality through material, color, and repetition. Her process represents a seamless collaboration between machine and handcraft, while also probing the limits of printmaking techniques. The exhibition presents recent paper sculptures as well as more two-dimensional works employing various printmaking methods. In the sculptures, two surfaces encounter one another, and the artwork becomes visible only through the overlapping of thousands of repetitions and varying elements. In works more traditionally regarded as printmaking, three-dimensionality emerges through the layered working of the material, its removal or presentation.
Often serial and based on geometric forms, Bell’s works are subtle events of transition and transformation, where a seemingly simple surface reveals movement, depth, or color only upon closer inspection. They challenge perception: where lies the boundary between surface and space, image and object, repetition and change? Bell’s practice does not aim for a single outcome, but rather a series of phases and tones that move between one another. The exhibition occupies this gray area—between black and white, light and shadow, certainty and uncertainty—where things are neither clear nor absolute, but in constant flux. It offers the viewer an experience in which process, material, and perception intertwine in a fascinating way.
Inka Bell (b. 1981, Espoo) lives in Helsinki. She holds a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from Uniarts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts, where she graduated with a specialization in printmaking in 2021. She works actively with prints, paper sculpture, and public art. In recent years, Bell has held solo exhibitions at Forum Box and Galleria G in Helsinki as well as at Bricks Gallery in Copenhagen. Her works are included in the collections of EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, HAM Helsinki Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, among others. In 2024, Bell received the William Thuring Foundation’s main prize awarded by the Finnish Art Society.
The exhibition is supported by the Finnish Heritage Agency and the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
