VICKIE VAINIONPÄÄ

Vickie Vainionpää explores the ever-changing relationship between the digital and the human body. In her Soft Body Dynamics series randomised data is used to create B-splines on a graph which are then hand-selected and transposed into a digital 3D space. Toying with lighting and texture the artist manipulates the forms to create her abstract compositions.

Though the digital plays a heavy part in the artist's practice; the works speak to a love of painting. The digital process allows the artist's hand to focus on paint, colour, and texture, Vainionpää employing thin layers of oil to build up her forms in a glassy rendering. In Rigid and Curved 04, 2023 the artist pulls from Kandinsky’s composition paintings, musical-esque ribbons curve across the canvas, a sharp contrast to Vainionpää’s bodily forms.

Whilst in London the artist began collecting further data for her Gaze Paintings, visiting institutions such as The National Gallery whilst wearing glasses that track the eye's movements. Considering paintings, namely Goltzius' Jupiter and Antiope, 1612, which feature a reclining nude. This shift from randomised data to studying how one engages with art unveils new questions in the artist's practice. Using the gaze data, can Vainionpää begin to subvert the male gaze inherent in the female nude? By translating her own gaze into an abstract representation, can the female body be reclaimed from patriarchal confines? What can the digital offer the painted body?

Solo exhibitions include; Museo Belvedere di San Leucio, Italy (forthcoming), 2023; Software, The Hole, NYC, 2022; NADA Miami (solo booth) with The Hole, 2022; FLOW_STATE, Galleria Nicola Pedana, Italy, 2021; Parallel Wilderness, Galerie AVE, Montreal, QC, 2020.

Group and Duo Shows include; X PINK 101, X Museum, Beijing (forthcoming), 2023; Abstraction, Taymour Grahne Projects, London (forthcoming), 2023; Cacotopia, Annka Kultys Gallery, London, 2023; Selected Works from the Collection of Elizabeth Margulies, The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, Miami, FL, 2022; amongst others.