Introduction

Kaisa Soini

”Kaisa Soini’s art might be characterized as poetic minimalism. Her paintings are images without images, not so much abstract compositions as objects hung up on a wall…

…She builds the surfaces of her paintings so that they are alive and change depending on the angle of looking and the lighting. In this way, she simultaneously appears to turn the traditional concept of space inside out.

Her paintings are not peeks into the deep windows of landscape or of the mind, or even complex conceptual games. With extremely simple gestures, she shows them as mirrors, as a kind of icons, which for me at least give cause to think about my own gaze, to ask myself what I am actually seeing when looking at an image without image.”

(Timo Valjakka, Helsingin Sanomat, 14 Feb 2006: ”Kuvattomia kuvia”)

ARTISTIC ACTIVITY

Kaisa Soini (b. 1966) is a visual artist whose artistic activity finds its background in the terrain between visual art and architecture. Kaisa Soini was educated as an architect, and she holds degrees from both the Cranbrook Academy of Art, USA, and the Tampere University of Technology, Finland.

Kaisa Soini is a full-time artist since 1995. She is a full member of the Finnish Painters’ Union and a member of the Artists’ Association of Finland.

Kaisa Soini has held dozens of solo exhibitions in Finland and the other Nordic countries, and has participated in a number of group exhibitions. Works by her are included in several public and private collections.

In recognition of her work spanning both visual art and architecture, Kaisa Soini received the first Carin and Erik Bryggman Prize, and she has been awarded a five-year state artist grant by the Arts Council of Finland.

Kaisa Soini has a long experience of teaching within both architecture and visual art, and she currently works as University Teacher of Art at the School of Architecture in Tampere University.

PAINTINGS

On this website, Kaisa Soini’s paintings are presented in a series of portfolios. The portfolio titles were selected to describe in one word the idea or characteristic that unites the works in each portfolio. The choice of grouping, not to mention the naming, was not unambiguous by any means. Still, it is as if a bond emerges from the paintings themselves that is stronger than, say, the principle of chronology and that it seems important to name. To further support this idea, the paintings are presented through a combination of images of each painting as a whole, its details and as it was seen in an exhibition.

The portfolios Paintings of Architecture contain an entity selected from three exhibitions. The background of each exhibition and the creative process are explained in more detail in words and images. The portfolios also include the text Paintings of Architecture, a summary of Kaisa Soini’s exhibitions published in the book ”40/40 – Young architects from Finland” (2002, Rakennustieto, ed. Roger Connah).

PUBLIC ART

In the 2010s, Kaisa Soini has created public art. These works are located in Tampere, in the vicinity of the Rantatunneli tunnel near the city centre and in the Vuores residential area. Images of the works are shown in individual portfolios, and the background information to them can be found at Public Art – Presentations.

SELECTED WRITINGS

Kaisa Soini has published the book Desire vacui – Tyhjän vuoksi (paintings and writings), and writings by her are included in several publications. In her essayistic writings, Kaisa Soini outlines her artistic vision from both theoretical starting-points and as thinking generated by the actual act of painting.

Kaisa Soini: Identity (self-portrait), 2000, pigment and oil on canvas, 153 x 138 cm