Details:
① Artwork:
Elegy for Witches and Sluts
This painting depicts a character sitting on a patch of garden, dressed only in a scarf around her head. The scarf is patterned with the cause of her angry crying, which is all the women throughout time who have faced violence and abuse for their strangeness and sexuality.
Riikka Sormunen's paintings delicately stage scenes where characters, plants, and objects strike poses, mixing soft sensuality with calculated artificiality. Working mainly with watercolor, water mixable oil and tiny brushes, the artist's work playfully explores contrasting colors, textures, and patterns. In the process of painstakingly crafting each composition, Sormunen blindly trusts in visions born from her excessive daydreaming. The artist's paintings focus on escapist pleasures, solitary meltdowns, and performative femininity—which is an eagerness to please that is in constant battle with the need for honesty.
Specs:
③ Artist:
Riikka Sormunen’s paintings mix soft sensuality with calculated artificiality in scenes that feature characters, plants, and objects striking poses for viewers. Working mainly with watercolor, water mixable oil and tiny brushes, the artist’s work explores contrasting textures, patterns and colors. Sormunen’s painstakingly crafted compositions draw from her excessive daydreaming, focusing on escapist pleasures, solitary meltdowns and performative femininity.
BIO:
Riikka Sormunen was born in Finland in 1987. After a brief stint studying fashion design, the artist worked as an illustrator before focusing entirely on painting.
Group exhibitions that have shown Sormunen’s work have taken place at: Marvin Gardens in Ridgewood, New York (2022); Pamplemousse Gallery in Richmond, Virginia (2022); Natasha Arselan Gallery in London, UK (2022); Ladies Room in Los Angeles, California (2022); Tchotchke Gallery in New York City (2021); and Kosminen in Helsinki, Finland (2020).
Sormunen’s work is supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
Sormunen lives and works in Helsinki, Finland.
