Riina Palmqvist is a Finnish visual artist, a graduate of the Arts Academy at the Turku University of Applied Sciences. She is currently living and working in Helsinki. The core of her work are ready-made installations and videoart. She creates composite environments for her exhibitions, referring to topics such as decadence, human psyche, fear, social interaction and materialism of modern society, or indifference to the environment.
The main topic selected for the Klubovna exhibition is a certain materialistic redundancy that we create around us every day. We accumulate incredible amounts of things and we assess their lifetime solely through the purchase of a new product. We live in a time of comfort and prosperity. The importance that mankind places on prosperity in wealthy social states is so enormous that many of us suffer from the feeling of existential emptiness around which a materialistic flood of objects accumulates. Seeking quick consolation in answer to the feeling of certain inner emptiness, we try to deal with a number of our problems through satisfying ourselves by the act of shopping. However, we find ourselves in the dead end of the feeling of frustration that we cannot have a certain something that we need to become a better person.
The author of the #starterpack exhibition uses a wide range of materials related to the theme of psychic frustrations in the 21st century. The installation functions as a metaphor of egoistic and destructive human behaviour. The #starterpack meme is a contemporary phenomenon, spreading over the internet mostly through social networks. The starter pack is a widely-known starter kit assembled to create an artificial idea of a celebrity, sub-culture or society archetype. It is presented in a series of suggested poly-panel photos that feature consumer products to illustrate the simulation of a certain personality. It is a marketing and commercial strategy that offers guidance on how to change one’s own identity to become a recognised person and deny oneself. But how can we represent a real person through certain products? Does not it in fact mean unification and creation of stereotypes? In this way, the author reflects on this phenomenon and tries to find answers to her own questions about what kind of false reality or even the illusion of perfect life do social media create and how they alienate us from of “physically experienced” real life.
Maybe it is just the right moment to realize one’s own natural self, who we are and who are the others. Time to accept one’s pros and cons and respect others as well as oneself, because this very natural character of ours harbours incredible magic.
Tereza Záchová
Imprint
| Artist | Riina Palmqvist |
| Exhibition | #starterpack |
| Place / venue | Klubovna Gallery, Brno |
| Dates | 4 April – 17 May 2018 |
| Website | www.galerieklubovna.cz/en/ |
| Index | Klubovna Gallery Riina Palmqvist |