Marjukka Korhonen Trigger

The main characters of Marjukka Korhonen’s exhibition are androgynous girls made out of cast aluminium and plaster. She varies the characters in different ways and materials, as by adding them a third arm or an adult female big toe made of plaster. Sometimes the girl spits or shouts or is coated with different colors. Every single character conceals an impulse for a change – a trigger. The trigger is an action that starts a chain of operations; it can cause a change that is either transient or permanent.  The trigger is also a small, absurd thing that has emerged in the working process and, in some way, altered the starting point of the sculpture. It may give options to the interpretation of the work and it can take the viewer to see things differently than before.

Alongside variation and change, one of the themes of the exhibition is also hair. The character in the sculpture Peppi is intensively and strongly present without braids, and in the series of drawings called Spectator, a figure hides behind hair and is unknown to the viewer. Then again, one might still think that the gaze of the figure is somewhere between the hair top and the edge of the white paper.

In the sculpture Hue of Red, the character looks at itself through a mirror (or does the character look at the exhibition visitors?) and explores femininity and masculinity within itself and in humans. This reflection continues in the androgynous figures of the exhibition where different genders exist simultaneously. The characters bring forward the diversity and complexity that condense our existence; a state of constant, slow change, and how a single person is forced to revise one´s actions and relationship to existence several times during one´s life – at least when meeting ´a trigger´.

The exhibition is supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.

Sculptor Marjukka Korhonen (born in 1968) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2001. Her artistic work extends from single artworks to planning projects for public space. Characteristic to Korhonen’s works is combining different materials and techniques, as she has done in this exhibition, and combined acrylic, plaster, pencil, mirror, cast aluminium and colors in her work. She lives and works in Helsinki.