Drawing installation:

“Mindless obedience is the worst crime”.
Sampsa Indrén, Finland, Henrik Jacob, Germany, Mika Karhu, Finland

I have always tried to express humanity with my work. I have expressed what it meens to be a fragile human being. I hope my art would increase tolerance and understanding between people. Often my work take the shape of a man or woman and sometimes a dog.
I mostly use wood as material.

Joakim Sederholm

Artwork. Sorrow, 2023, 21 x 21 x 83 cm, painted wood

Toolbox Kabinett: Anton Laiko

Pilvi Ojala

My interest is how things are installed. For example, stage design, illusions, artificial and “authentic” are themes that intrigue my mind. In addition to that I am as well interested in museums. Such as art museums, historical museums and biological, scientific, theatre and movie museums, not to forget the museums that show any kind of curiosities.

As a person I am curious. As an Artist I shift from technique and media to another which might seem to be a disability to concentrate. I paint, I draw, I make animation and I build three-dimensional works. Although for me the basic motive as an artis is to collect all kinds of visual material, to edit it and to compose a visual piece of art. I am like a collector who observes, discovers, and digests the world around me.

For me Art is a medium to combine various interests of mine and therefore a way to create a kind of personal Wunderkammer. It is a way to express myself and an attempt to try to place myself in the World and to try to understand it.

Toolbox Kabinett: Jakob Roepke

Tiia Matikainen

A human figure shrouded in a protective web of plants and soil is at the core of Tiia Matikainen’s latest sculptures. Forms of roots and sand dunes sculpt on clay surface assume the form of strange woodland inhabitants. For the artist these sculptures are guardian figures, a protective layer between human and the surrounding world.

The forest and Finnish mythology related to that are important inspirations for the artistic work of Matikainen. One of the most interesting is the idea of being hidden by the forest. Spirits may lure those moving about there, to become lost in an absurd world and vanish from the view of others.

Being hidden by the forest represents not only fear but also security and connection to nature, for the forest and its flora protect us and all life on our planet.
– To be one with the forest so that finally you feel that you have been lost in its depths.
Tiia Matikainen (b. 1975, Kitee, Finland) is a sculptor and ceramics artist. She completed The Master of Arts degree at University of Art and Design Helsinki in 2002, and presently lives and works in Mänttä.

Further information: http://www.tiiamatikainen.com

Tiia Matikainen

Eine menschliche Figur, die von einem schützenden Netz aus Pflanzen und Erde umhüllt ist, steht im Mittelpunkt der neuesten Skulpturen von Tiia Matikainen. Formen von Wurzeln und Sanddünen, die auf Tonoberflächen gemeißelt sind, nehmen die Gestalt von seltsamen Waldbewohnern an. Für die Künstlerin sind diese Skulpturen Wächterfiguren, eine schützende Schicht zwischen dem Menschen und der umgebenden Welt.

Der Wald und die damit verbundene finnische Mythologie sind wichtige Inspirationen für die künstlerische Arbeit von Matikainen. Eine der interessantesten ist die Vorstellung, vom Wald versteckt zu werden. Geister können diejenigen, die sich dort bewegen, dazu verlocken, sich in einer absurden Welt zu verlieren und aus dem Blickfeld der anderen zu verschwinden.

Das Verstecktsein im Wald steht nicht nur für Angst, sondern auch für Sicherheit und Verbundenheit mit der Natur, denn der Wald und seine Pflanzenwelt schützen uns und alles Leben auf unserem Planeten.
– Eins zu sein mit dem Wald, so dass man schließlich das Gefühl hat, sich in seinen Tiefen verloren zu haben.
Tiia Matikainen (geb. 1975, Kitee, Finnland) ist Bildhauerin und Keramikerin. Sie schloss 2002 den Master of Arts an der Universität für Kunst und Design Helsinki ab und lebt und arbeitet derzeit in Mänttä.

Weitere Informationen: http://www.tiiamatikainen.com

Toolbox Kabinett: Anna-Maria Balov (Berlin)

Juha Sääski
Joyful light and gloomy shadows

Nadja Schöllhammer
Human Tangle

28.4.-25.5. 2024

Opening on Friday 26.4. 2024, 19-21

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX
Koloniestraße 120
13359 Berlin Wedding
we-sat 3-7 pm
U Bahn Osloerstraße

Mortality is elsewhere, mixed media on paper (watercolour, acrylic, colouring pencil, drawing charcoal on paper), 40 x 60 cm, 2022

Juha Sääski is showing a collection of mixed-media works, which are dealing with lights and shadows of human life. Mixed media in this case means: : acrylic color, watercolor, colouring pencil, drawing charcoal, pencil on paper.

The starting point for this theme was an own experience of the fragile dividing line between life and death. The works are shared in two parts, the larger area is filled with colorful and happy world of life, the smaller area shows black and white and cold shadows of death.
Sääski uses cliche-like, naive , happy and sad contradicting elements and some humoristic tools. In combining tragic-comical and contradicting elements he is striving to describe the paradoxes, the fragility and the beauty of human life.
According to Charlie Chaplin: ”Life is tragic at close up, but comedy from distance”.

Juha Sääski is a finnish artist, born in Helsinki 1952, living and working at west-south of Finland. He has exhibited mostly in Finland but also internationally, in Berlin in several solo shows and in several group exhibitions and in Germany also for instance in Galerie Nord, Nuremberg, Galerie Nord/Kunstverein Tiergarten Berlin, Ludwig Museum, Koblenz and Kunstverein & Kunsthaus Viernheim. Sääski has also participated exhibitions in UK, USA, Sweden, Italy and Estonia. More information and CV at homepages: www.juha-saaski.fi and also www.galerietoolbox.com.

Ghosts at work (I)

Nadja Schöllhammer: “Ghosts at work (I)”, 2011/2024, 
Paper, cut-outs, newspaper fragments, hot glue, Indian ink, wood, eggshell and plant parts, 
53 x 72 x 20 cm
photo and © Nadja Schöllhammer

Nadja Schöllhammer – Human Tangle

Nadja Schöllhammer invents methods of expanded drawing. At Toolbox Gallery, she is showing a selection of drawings and paper assemblages. Schöllhammer is interested in the mutability of human consciousness and the connection between individual and collective existence. In her group of works “Human Tangle”, she develops graphic transformations of human body forms. Using pencil, cutter knive, hot glue and Indian ink, she explores the material paper and thus creates a structure in which the individual bodies are integrated into a larger organism.
She describes her approach as follows: “By expanded drawing, I approach a condition that seems impossible in so-called reality: a parallel world in which the (supposed) boundaries between human/animal/plant, male/female, beautiful/ugly disappear. An alternative world to the usual hierarchies of perception and meaning, in which many things are possible at the same time and contradictions are overcome.”
Nadja Schöllhammer, born 1971 in Esslingen am Neckar (Germany), has shown her work in Germany and abroad, e.g. at Kunsthalle Tübingen, Galerie Nord/ Kunstverein Tiergarten Berlin, Fengxian Museum, Shanghai, Marta Herford Museum, ARTER Istanbul, Arp Museum Rolandseck, Remagen and many more. She has received numerous grants and awards, including grants by Kunstfonds Bonn, Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral`s grant and art award, the Tokyo residency by Berlin Senate, DAAD travel grants for Colombia and Mexico, a grant by Akademie Schloss Solitude Stuttgart, and many more. Since 2024, she holds a professorship for drawing at Hochschule Hannover. Schöllhammer lives and works in Berlin and Hannover. More information at
www.nadjaschoellhammer.de

Yö ry Artists’ Association is an advocacy organization for professional artists from various fields, primarily operating in Helsinki. YÖ in BERLIN is a group exhibition organized by Yö ry, featuring works by its member artists. Yö has over 300 member artists and a gallery in Helsinki on Lönnrotinkatu. The space is free for all exhibiting artists, not just members of the association. At the core of Yö is its members’ desire to act. Yö ry is not merely an artist-run gallery but a coalition of proactive and enthusiastic professionals from various fields. Yö is a movement and community, whose large membership enables even the most ambitious initiatives to be realized.

YÖ IN BERLIN is the first exhibition exchange between Yö ry and Galerie Toolbox. The exhibition is curated by Toolbox’s founding members together with Yö ry members Mia Makela and Henriikka Pöllänen.

Yö’s exhibition at Galerie Toolbox includes video art, visual art, and a portfolio showcase, where you can browse the works of Yö’s member artists on a screen. The video works and portfolios were selected through an open call.

All the videos have been produced during 2020´s. The video works have been curated into 3 different screening programs. Remnants of the Wild presents videos exploring our partnerships to non-human world from Earth Forces, Mia Makela and Lau Rämö. Tapestry of Time contains video works unraveling the echoes of past in the present time from Johanna Väisänen, Hanna Råst, Joonas Jokiranta and Airbakers (Toivola & Wager).
Close Encounters presents a collection of videos focused on exploring intimacy through performance art from Juhani Koivumäki, Kainulainen&Latva, Mari Hokkanen, Eoin O`Dowd,
To Kosie, Sini Henttu and Ginko Shu.

The paintings and sculptures in the exhibition bring forth the diversity of materials. Isabel Pathirane’s paintings are bound together by the strong use of color and expressiveness. Tuomas Holst blurs the lines between painting and sculpture with works that are made from recycled materials. Krista Blomqvist’s series “Creatures of the Night” consists of paintings on copper, which evolve over time as the copper itself changes. The glass sculptures of Henriikka Pöllänen and Kimmo Reinikka bring out different dimensions of glass as material.

Curatorial team consisted of Toolbox founding members Maija Helasvuo and Niina Räty in collaboration with Yö Association board members Mia Mäkelä and Henriikka Pöllänen.

Opening program includes a performance from Tapani Pirog and an opening talk by Yö curatorial team.. Tapani Pirog will premiere a new performative work entitled Ich bin ein Baseball during the exhibition opening.  Tapani Pirog is a Helsinki-based ultramodernist and post-expressionist. https://www.instagram.com/aetherblau/  www.pirog.fi

More information on the schedule will be available later on Yö’s and Toolbox’s websites.

Artists from Wales and Berlin at Toolbox Finnish-German Art Space Berlin

Opening: 28.6.2024, 7pm

Exhibition 30.6.–20.7.2024

Artists:

Wales: Marja Bonada, Katie Cyfenw, Penny Hallas

Berlin: Susanne Ring

Opening hours: Wed–Sat 3–7 pm

Simo Ripatti (Fi) and Patrick Huber (Berlin) in Toolbox.

Opening: 26. 7. 2024, 7pm, you#re welcome!

Exhibition 28.7.–24.8.2024

Simo Ripatti
Possessed, 2023
Videoinstallation

The work describes observation based on memory and how continuous observation of new things affects the memory image reliability. The starting point is my thoughts on the contingencies of existence and events and how they meet one’s own understanding and thereby form a point of view. Formed through this the point of view also determines how the memory is colored and how long you can consider the memory reliable.
Perception is the basis for connecting to reality, but only comparing to memory, memory and perception questioning and conscious thinking form a reliable experience. In my opinion, it is in many ways the characteristic that defines the experience of this work.

Patrick Huber

Drawings and Objects

Patrick Huber: Füßeln – from the series “Techtelmechtel”wood, wax, approx 100 x 40 cm

Opening hours: Wed–Sat 3–7 pm

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX
Koloniestraße 120
13359 Berlin-Wedding
U-Bahn Osloerstraße

An Feiertagen ist die Toolbox geschlossen
On Bank holidays Toolbox is closed

Opening: Fri 23.02.2024, 7pm

Exhibition: 25.2-23.3.2024
Open on Kolonie Weekend, Sun 25.02. 24, 2–6pm

Toolbox Cabunett: Hildegard Skowasch

Iris Germanica, a plain flower seen all over Europe
Iris Germanica is Goddess of Everything
Iris Germanica is my sad song of time passing by

I think my painting as a living organism. In the beginning there is a seed of idea, something that bothers me and wants to see the light. First painting is a sprout, second is a leaf, third is maybe a flower and ten paintings makes a body.
I’d say: I paint for pleasure, pleasure of the recognition: that’s what it’s meant to be!
I’d hope: there are seeds of all seen sprinkled on you!

In my painting I’m guided by association and desire. I want to paint something that I yet never saw, but still when seeing it feels obvious. This feeling of recognition is what declares painting ready.

I moved to Berlin ten years ago, and while painting these paintings I also relived that time, time that made life permanently dichotomous, it goes on two tracks.

Iris Germanica is fragmented saga about time, loss, immigration, nation, myth, botanic, cities and evolution. Some parts were lost, some altered, its old but not original. It’s sincere but not true.

I am a visual artist based in Helsinki and Berlin. I did my MFA degree in 2011 in University of Fine Arts in Helsinki, where I’m also doing my PhD about meanings of colours an seeing. My works were shown in several soloshows and group exhibitions in Finland, Denmark and Germany like Helsinki Kunsthalle, Forum Box Gallery and Kunst am Spreeknie/Transformart festival.

Siiri Haarla
Helsinki 23.1.2024

artwork: Iris Germanica ‘Nibelungen’ oil painting on canvas, 140x100cm, 2023 (detail)

Hildegard Skowasch

*born in Essen. Lives and works in Berlin.

Studied at the Kunstakademie Münster and at the Ecole supérieure des Arts Plastiques, Tourcoing (France).

Hildegard Skowasch’s work focuses on sculpture (paper/ceramics), drawing and printmaking. Starting from form, she uses different materials to create projection surfaces and a world of her own with shifts in content, possibilities and perspectives on being.

She is the initiator of artistic collaborations such as the “Hildegard Project” and “Generator”.

Since 1989, she has held numerous residencies, including at Künstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, USA, the Saari residence of the Kone Foundation, Finland and the KKVV Luleå, Sweden.

She exhibits internationally.

In 2019, she was represented with a comprehensive exhibition at the Polish National Museum in Gdansk and in 2022 with another major solo exhibition at the BWA Municipal Gallery in Olsztyn.

She is showing ceramic wall works in the Toolbox Gallery cabinet.

Hildegard Skowasch: untitled, 2019, Ceramics glazed, ca 20 x 20 x 20 cm

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX
Koloniestraße 120
13359 Berlin-Wedding
U-Bahn Osloerstraße

Wed, Fri-Sat 15-19, Thu 16-20
An Feiertagen ist die Toolbox geschlossen
On Bank holidays Toolbox is closed

The year 2024 could be decisive. Another state could disappear from the world map. Completely or within the borders we know. After several years of the nightmare unfolding around us and the tragedy lurking within, this possibility no longer seems unimaginable. Last year, we Armenians lost an important part of our homeland – Artsakh. An independent democratic state, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia is in danger. Ukraine is in danger. Who is next? We are artists, and we have no ready-made recipes on how to bring back peace and stability, prosperity and confidence in the future. But we do have a refuge – our love of and belief in painting as a world of its own. In this exhibition, we want to reflect on the limits of this world.

We got to know each other at a vernissage at Galerie Taube in 2019. Gagik had been to Berlin several times before and was invited to take part in the December Salon. As it turned out – in the last catalogue of Galerie Taube. The next year, the Covid pandemic closed the borders and artistic exchange slowed down drastically. In February 2022, bombs fell on Ukraine and Gagik decided to leave his new home, studio, library and artworks to save his family. (The war began suddenly and insidiously. Modern missiles can reach any point in the country, no one is safe). The picturesque town of Uzhgorod, where Gagik lived with his young wife and daughter, lies on the border with Slovakia. I offered to come by car and pick up my colleague at the border. Many countries from Switzerland to Canada invited the Ukrainians, but Gagik was already familiar with Berlin and settled in the German capital with his family. In the Berlin district of Pankow, we ran a gallery together with the artist Andreas Wolf and Wolf&Galentz could not help but reflect on the situation after the outbreak of military aggression. In June 2022, we offered the public a group exhibition Commentaries on Betrayal and Violence. Gagik was the painter at the centre (focus) of this project. At the same time, we could not expect the 69-year-old artist to be able to immediately produce new works for the exhibition. After his arrival in Berlin, Gagik had to go through a long process of finding accommodation for his family, a school for his daughter and sorting out paperwork. However, Gagik brought his experience and vision of art to Germany and masterfully commented on the works of numerous artists of different generations and from different countries in our group exhibition. Gagik continues to actively participate in artistic life in Berlin, his works are light and virtuosic, lively and fascinating. I would also like to allow myself this freedom of expression. 30 years of living in Berlin have disciplined and somewhat constricted me. In this exhibition, I would like to allow myself to be a painter who comments. In addition to Gagik’s paintings, I am presenting a series of objects. Some are found, others are placed in the context of the frame, but all are not created with brush and paint. In addition, we – both Armenian artists – have created a joint print for this exhibition Vereinte Gegenüberstellung: Back to back, I – a Russian citizen and Gagik – a Ukrainian citizen try to demarcate a small free space for us. Thanks to Berlin, where artists find refuge and to Andreas Wolf and Toolbox where Gagik Kurginian and I are allowed to exhibit together.

Archi Galentz, born 1971 in Moscow (Russia as part of the USSR), 1989 studied at the State University of Fine Arts and Theatre in Yerevan, Armenia (part of the USSR), 1992–97 studied art at the Berlin University of the Arts, master student of Klaus Fußmann. Since 1989 over eighty international exhibitions, since 2000 working as an exhibition curator, journalist and lecturer. Founding member of a platform for Armenian diaspora artists ‘Underconstruction.Home’. 2008 founding of his own project space InteriorDAsein in Berlin. 2019 founding, together with Andreas Wolf, of the gallery Wolf & Galentz Galerie in Berlin Pankow. Father of two children. Archi Galentz lives and works in Berlin.

Gagik Kurginian, born 1953 in Yerevan, Armenia (part of the USSR). 1966 resettlement with parents to Zaporizhia, Ukraine (part of the USSR). 1977 graduated from the State Medical University. In addition to being a doctor, he worked as a jeweller, sportsman and artist. Since 1989 participation in numerous international exhibitions. 2015(?) Relocation to Uzhgorog, Ukraine, 2022 relocation with family to Berlin. Father of two children. Gagik Kurginian lives and works in Berlin.

Videoworks by students of Aalto University Helsinki, Finland

Reetta Saarikoski, Sandra Enkvist, Erik Vartiainen, Katja Niemi

Still foto: Reetta Saarikoski

Opening Fri 29. Sep 2023, 7 pm

Artists
Sahar Nahavandi Nejad, Atefeh Mehrvarz, Minoo Kiani,
Azin Rostami, Raheleh Ghavipanjeh, Behnam Bakhshizadeh,
Farhad Gavzan, Hossein Ghafouri

The exhibition is complemented by smaller works on the same topic by Toolbox members Maija Helasvuo, Sampsa Indrén, Mika Karhu, Niina Räty, Juha Sääski and Ilkka Sariola.

Curated by  Farhad Gavzan and Ilkka Sariola

The exhibition “Wounds” is very special. Toolbox is honoured to present Iranian art, in particular drawings by eight contemporary Iranian artists: Sahar Nahvandi Nejad, Atefeh Mehrvarz, Minoo Kiani, Azin Rostami, Rheleh Ghavipanjeh, Farhad Gavzan, Behnam Bakhshi and Behnam Bakhshizadeh. In addition to Iranian art, some of our TOOLBOX members, Maija Helasvuo, Mika Karhu, Juha Sääski, Sampsa Indren and Ilkka Sariola, will also be presenting some smaller works.

The theme of the exhibition, wound, is ambiguous; everyone has their own invisible wounds, the wounds of violence may appear as scars and the traces of war as open bleeding wounds. We live in critical times and societies are threatened by the Corona pandemic and the war in Ukraine. In fact, the pandemic and the ‘quarantine galleries’ on Instagram, which took place in the year 2020, were the starting point for this exhibition. In the difficult early stages of the pandemic, Iran ended up in a complete lockdown and quarantine. The artist Mr Farhad Gavzan was interested in my artworks on Instagram and he presented some of my artworks in the “Quarantine Gallery” he founded. This gave me the idea to create a cultural exchange project “Quarantine gallery, drawings from Iran and Finland”. I ended up posting 78 days, Instastories and on my wall, from 18.3. – 1.6. 2020, representing as many artists from Iran and Finland. During this project I received many messages from Iranian and Finnish artists who appreciated this cultural art exchange. Many asked if I could represent their artworks. I was impressed by the powerful expression of the works of Iranian artists, often women. I experienced how a drawn picture touches across cultural borders. Now, after more than three years, I have the honour of presenting the works of 8 Iranian artists live in the Toolbox Gallery. This exhibition is curated by my friend Farhad Gavzan and I. The process has been challenging for many unfortunate reasons, but also rewarding. I thank I thank everyone involved in organizing the exhibition in Iran, Berlin and Finland, especially Farhad Gavzan, Andreas Wolf and rest of our Toolbox crew.

Niina Räty (painting and drawing), Maija Helasvuo (wood sculptures)

25.8.-23.9.2023
Opening hours: Wed-Sat 3pm-7pm

Closed on bank holidays

Maija Helasvuo

My sculptures shown in the exhibition were created in memory of my deceased relatives.
In the old Finnish belief, the bird acts as a messenger between the living and the dead. So the connection to the afterlife is always there.

Fig.: From Spring to Autum, 2021, Photo: Jussi Tiainen

Niina Räty

I have a dog who brings joy and structure to my life. She trusts me, eagerly keeps me company, and makes ordinary days more meaningful. She is considered my property. Animals are traded, they are milked, sheared and slaughtered, they are made to carry and compete. Is it even possible to build a relationship with an animal without seeking benefits?

Toolbox Cabinet

In the cabinet, two music archaeologists will introduce themselves.
One from Finland and one from Berlin:
Dr. Arnd Adje Both
Dr. Riitta Rainio
An archaeomusicological installation consisting of a virtual reality video and ceramic sculptures of instrumentalists will be presented.

The virtual reality videos bring to life the soundscape at the rock painting site of Siliävuori, Finland, about 5,000 years ago. The painted rock cliff rising directly from the lake responds to drumming and singing with echoes. Rock painting sites with images of animals, humans, boats and even drummers are believed to have been ritual sites for prehistoric hunter-fisher-gatherers.
The virtual reality reconstruction of Silävuori was made in collaboration between archaeologists, musicologists and cognitive scientists from the University of Helsinki, using terrestrial and aerial laser scans, spherical photography, spatial impulse response recordings, studio recordings and convolution. The work was part of Dr. Riitta Rainio’s project ”Acoustics and auditory culture at hunter-gatherer rock art sites in Northern Europe, Siberia and North America” funded by the Academy of Finland (2018–2023).

Frans van Tartwijk (NL, 1963) is a dutch painter and performance artist. His work has been exhibited in many galleries and art spaces in the Netherlands and abroad. He recently took part in a residency in Chengdu (China), together with Guda Koster.

Jean-Philippe Rousset (Fr, 1973) graduated at the Art Academy of Clermont-Ferrand. His lives and works in Amsterdam. Since 2018 he forms an artistduo with Jean-Philippe Paumier (JP&JP) and exhibits regularly in and around Amsterdam.

Jean-Philippe Paumier (Fr, 1980) mostly creates sculptures and installations based on the principles of ‘ready-made’ and ‘objet trouvé’. His work has been showed in several artspaces, art fairs and galleries in the Netherlands and abroad.

www.fransvantartwijk.nl
www.paumier.weebly.com

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX
Koloniestraße 120
13359 Berlin-Wedding
U-Bahn Osloerstraße

An Feiertagen ist die Toolbox geschlossen
On Bank holidays Toolbox is closed

Guest exhibition of Dutch artists in InteriorDAsein and Toolbox. In collaboration with Kunstruimte 411, Haarlem, Netherlands. Curated by Hans Kuiper and Archi Galentz.

With works by Marius van Zandwijk (painting), Aquil Copier (painting), Piet Zwaanswijk (painting), Jessica Assmann-Zwaanswijk (painting), Sina Khani (filmmaker-performance artist), Ilja Warmerdam (painting), MC de Waal (photography), Antonio Rego (digital drawing prints), Gerard Veldman (painting), Daan van Houten (drawing/woodcut),  Rene Bosch (photography) and Hans Kuiper (drawing). In dialogue with Berlin artists

Opening on Friday, October 25th from 7 p.m. in InteriorDAsein, supervised by Archi Galentz and at the same time in ToolBox, supervised by Hans Kuiper

Opening hours after the colony weekend by prior arrangement.
Finissage on November 24th from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. in ToolBox and from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. in InteriorDAsein.

Warm invitation to the opening of DEATH by Richard Najorka on Friday, January 24th 2025, 18:00–21:00

In DEATH, objects related to death, mourning, and remembering are being called into question regarding their materiality as well as their spatial and social contexts. DEATH is Richard Najorka’s first solo show. He studied at Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main and lives in Berlin.

Open by appointment until February 21st, please contact: richardnajorka@outlook.de

Open on Kolonie Wedding weekend:
Friday, January 31: 19:00–21:00
Sunday, February 02: 14:00–17:00

Warm invitation to the opening of strangers with works by PETRA KARADIMAS + KAISU KOIVISTO

on Friday, February 28, 19:00 – 22:00 at Toolbox Finnish-German Art Space Berlin.

In their photographic works, Petra Karadimas and Kaisu Koivisto both observe a nature more out of sync than picturesque.

Karadimas focuses on nature in an urban setting, photographing buildings, anonymous structures and vegetation thriving side by side. Together, they form a web of visual and cultural references where nature often inhabits the spaces in between or inadvertently outgrows the spaces it has been allotted.

Koivisto, on the other hand, travels to the far north and its uninhabited landscapes, investigating processes of change. She captures landscapes that are no longer serene and untouched, yet remain unnervingly beautiful even in the face of looming ecological emergencies.

PETRA KARADIMAS (b. 1967, based in Berlin, Germany) photographs her everyday urban environment. Proceeding from details in her surroundings, she questions a perception based on seemingly incidental urban scenarios and examines fragments of nature and landscape in the spaces in-between the city. Building sites, wasteland and transitory spaces form a starting point for an investigation of urban codes and structures that meet and interact in an urban setting. www.karadimas.de

KAISU KOIVISTO (b.1962, based in Helsinki, Finland) works across photography, sculpture and installation. Her interests are deeply rooted in the North: its landscapes, political dimensions and the changes happening in them. In her ongoing photographic projects Conversations With Ice and Soft Ice Koivisto explores Arctic landscapes dominated by ice, sea and rocks. The presence and consequences of human activity is visible as an estranged landscape and mindscape. http://kaisukoivisto.com/

Exhibition March 1 – 22, 2025
Gallery hours Wed – Sat 15:00 – 19:00
Kolonie Weekend Sunday, March 1, 14:00 – 18:00

Opening: Fri, 25.04.2025, 7 pm

Open on Kolononie Wedding weekend: Sun.: 27.04.2025 from 2–6 pm

25.4.-24.5.2025

opening hours: Wed-Sat 3-7 pm

Drawings and paintings

From Europe’s outskirts,

From the fringes of culture,

And from the edges of the mind.

The exhibiting artists are Alexei Gordin (EST), Anna Emilia Järvinen (FI), Jussi Kekkonen (FI) and Jussi Pyky (FI).

The exhibition has been supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

——-

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX

Koloniestraße 120

13359 Berlin-Wedding

U-Bahn Osloer Straße

An Feiertagen ist die Toolbox geschlossen

On Bank holidays Toolbox is closed

Warm welcome to SPRING CLAMP

Mon 5.5.2025, doors 17:30

A sound filled evening with good times, performances by three Finnish groups Timate ynts, Blowjob and uRge as well as a sound sculpture by Araiké Da Silva that can be activated during the event.

Timate ynts is an improvised experimental group whose music is mostly based around synths, detuned guitars, field recordings and vocals. https://timateynts.bandcamp.com/

Blowjob is an experimental woodwind trio that plays minimalistic self-written and improvised music/sound-based pieces. Their style flirts with pop, renaissance and contemporary classical music, tied together with soft ambient drone aesthetic. The ensemble consists of a clarinet, a bass recorder and a bassoon.

uRge is a duo that explores the interfaces between performance and concert through playful and feminist lens by making visible hidden performative practices of music. They actively seek to dismantle masculine and essentializing notions of “pure music” associated with classical music as well as experimental electronic music. In practice, they work with techniques such as analogue sound synthesis, digital sound processing, experimental microphone techniques, acoustic instruments and text.

Doors 17.30

Further schedule to be announced

@Galerie Toolbox

Koloniestraße 120, Berlin Wedding

Free admission (pay what you can); the donations will go fully towards Gaza Champions. Facebook: https://www.championgaza.xyz/

Drawing for the poster made by Tuuli Sipilä.”

Warmly welcome to our next opening on Friday, 26. September 2025, at 7 pm

Exhibition: 26.9.–25.10.2025

Opening hours: Wed–Sat 3–7 pm

Kolonie Wedding Weekend open on Sunday, 28.9.2025 from 2–6 pm

Videoworks by students of Aalto University Film Department, Helsinki, Finland

Featuring artists

Joona Ikonen, Mika Koskinen, Julia Matinniemi, Sanna Langinkoski and Joonas Veijanen

“Dünne Räume / Thin Rooms” -exhibition dives into the space between the physical and the spiritual worlds, where our present experiences blend with memories and the past that lingers in the space. The works explore memories, spirituality, and individual experiences in a diverse and open-minded manner. The works challenge the viewer to explore the moment we live in and to reflect on the meaning of presence in that thin space that separates the past from the future.
The exhibition is part of the Associative Visual Storytelling course for Master students in the Film and Animation department at Aalto University (Finland). The course is led, and the exhibition is organized by visual artist and university pedagogue Mika Karhu.

Joona Ikonen
Memory Lan, short film, 5 min

History echoes through the corridors of the present, even if we refuse to hear it. The work compels the viewer to confront the unsettling rhymes of our time. Are you complicit?

Mika Koskinen
Muodollinen lounas / Formal lunch, animation, 2 min

Formal lunch refers to Eucharist and rituals. Life appears often as a sequence of absurd events. In the end, is it the religion which can save us?

Julia Matinniemi
Villa Pfaffenlehne, documentary, 15 min

Jan, Julia and Silke make a final visit to Villa Pfaffenlehne, a run down garden cottage in the outskirts of Erfurt owned by the latter’s mother and others Oma.

Joonas Veijanen
Varjostus / Shadowing, video+audio, 2 min 25 sec

Step into the light (of the projector).
By entering the picture you cut a hole into the image.
But don’t worry. You’re casting a shadow.

Sanna Langinkoski
Time traveler, visual artwork, paper & textile

“In family photos from 80 years ago, I saw a woman who looked strikingly familiar. She looked just like me.”
The work builds a bridge between the past and the present, while also reflecting on the layers of memory, connections between generations, and the fleeting presence of history. It is a personal journey through time, in which the photographs create a connection to a person whose life has already ended, but whose familiar gaze lives on in the photographs. One day, I too will be a past figure in a photograph.

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX
Koloniestraße 120
13359 Berlin-Wedding
U-Bahn Osloer Straße

An Feiertagen ist die Toolbox geschlossen
On Bank holidays Toolbox is closed

Welcome to the opening at Toolbox Finnish-German Art space on Frday 27.6.2025 at 7 pm

Artists:

Teemu Saukkonen: Moments of Life

Ulrika Segerberg: Collapse – special guest: matka

Exhibition: 27.06.–19.07.2025
Closing event: 19.07.2025 at 4:30–6 pm

Opening hours: Wed–Sat: 3–7 pm

More about the artists:

https://www.saukkonenteemu.fi

https://www.ulrikasegerberg.net/

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Temu Saukkonen

KURZÜBERBLICK ÜBER DIE LEITMOTIVE DER “Moments of Life ” AUSSTELLUNG

Der Inhalt der Gemälde steht in seiner tieferen Bedeutung auf Messers Schneide“, denn die von Menschen verarbeiteten Tiere stehen nicht nur für Leiden und das Ende des Lebens, sondern auch für ihre Bedeutung als Nahrungsmittel. Die Kreaturen in Saukkonens Werken symbolisieren Verlassenheit und Unschuld, aber auch menschliche Macht und Entfremdung von der Natur.

Der kompromisslose Realismus und die geraden Pinselstriche in den Gemälden vermitteln eine geheimnisvolle Bedrohung – aber auch Hoffnung. Durch die sensible Beherrschung der Farben werden die Tiere fast „lebendig“ dargestellt, und ihre proportional überdimensionale Größe wird als Anreiz genutzt, um Respekt vor jedem Lebewesen zu zeigen. Die (sur)rationale Tragödie, die dargestellt wird, ist Mitgefühl – in allen ausgestellten Kunstwerken mit schwarzem Humor gespickt.

Die Besucher:innen müssen jedoch selbst entscheiden, wie sie die Erzählungen der Gemälde in der Ausstellung „Momente des Lebens“ vervollständigen.

Artwork: Teemu Saukkonen Sucking Pig, 2025, oil and acrylic on canvas, 155 x 200 cm

 

Ulrika Segerberg

Collapse – special guest: matka

Ulrika Segerberg: Still from Collapse

Time scatters. We run — but do we hide? Tick tack, the roof is cracking, covering our fur with paledust. Tick tack — how do we react when what we used to know takes on a different shape, oreven falls apart? From whom do we run? We do fly, sometimes. Do we dance alone, or go to sleep with a kiss on our cheek?

Since 2016, Ulrika Segerberg and Martin Kleinmichel have collaborated under the name matka, gradually shaping their debut album — each song accompanied by a video. The installation at Toolbox features their latest track Collapse, along with paintings and sculptural props used in the video. Frame by frame, the lens captures a search — not for narrative or meaning, but perhaps for those fleeting, quiet moments that comfort us when no one is watching. Martin composed the music and edited the video. Ulrika wrote the lyrics, contributed the hookline, and sang.

Ulrika Segerberg (b. 1976, Sweden) is a Berlin-based artist working with painting, sculpture,
video, performance, and music. Drawing from mythology, folklore, and pop culture, her
installations combine materials such as ceramics, textiles, sound, and text, moving between
figuration and abstraction. Her work has been shown at Västerås Konstmuseum, Deutscher
Künstlerbund, LENTOS Kunstmuseum, Dorich House Museum, and others. She is represented in collections including the Swedish Arts Council and Malmö Konstmuseum.

CV Ulrika Segerberg (Download PDF)

Welcome to our opening on Friday, 25. July 2025, 7 pm

Artists:

Peter Hock (Berlin) and Mika Karhu (Finland)

Exhibition: 26.07.–23.08.2025

Opening hours: Mit–Sat 3–7 pm

The Compulsion to Name and Art’s Resistance: On the Difficulty of Viewing Peter Hock’s (b. 1962) charcoal drawings

Art challenges us in a way we are not always willing to admit: it forces us to dwell in uncertainty, discomfort, without the protection of conceptual frameworks. This challenge is vividly embodied in Hock’s art, where the experience of viewing his work becomes a site of tension. The viewer wants to name—but cannot. Hock’s pieces offer no clear categories, no space for simple classification or interpretation. They move along the boundary between the recognizable and the unrecognizable, from one form to another, from the natural to the alien. This refusal of unambiguousness is not an obstacle to understanding, but rather its condition: it is precisely the indeterminacy that opens the possibility for a deeper experience.

Our culture is deeply rooted in the power of naming. By naming things, we define them, organize them, give them a manageable form. Naming brings a sense of safety—it is a human way of keeping chaos at bay. But at the same time, naming can also exclude, reduce, and flatten. When art, like Hock’s work, resists naming, it not only irritates the viewer but also reveals something fundamental about ourselves: our desire to control what we do not understand.

This insight into the double nature of naming—as a source of safety and simultaneously a form of limitation—raises a profound philosophical question: to what extent is understanding based on appropriation, and to what extent on the willingness to remain open to what exceeds language? Naming involves power. When we name, we draw a boundary—on this side lies the known and controlled, on the other the foreign, the undefined, perhaps even the threatening. The unnamed is left without a place in our shared system, and for that reason it unsettles us.

An artwork that refuses to be explained challenges this order. It does not provide a ready-made framework of interpretation but forces the viewer to tolerate ambiguity. This kind of ambiguity cannot be resolved by intellectual effort; instead, it must be inhabited. One must look without understanding—listen without immediately translating what is heard into words. This experience can even be therapeutic, as it dismantles the modern mind’s compulsion for control.

Mika Karhu

The world stutters.

It is full of opposing opinions that contradict the facts of the world. Instead of facts, people talk about values and imagine that values themselves become facts if one just wishes, believes, and wants hard enough.

The world stutters.
It cries out for the help of intellect, but that voice is silenced—into the cavities of silence and stupidity, hidden among cobwebs. The hair follicles of foolishness ooze with the defiance of word-bodies resting on beliefs. Beliefs whose destructive energy and burning pain points are stale clichés about politics, race, economy, art, and sexuality.

Double standards build mental architectures through which people navigate their social world. They shape their actions according to habits of prejudice and routine assumptions. So human—and as Nietzsche said, “there is too much human in man.”

What is hypocrisy, where an individual or group publicly presents certain moral values or principles, yet acts in direct contradiction to them? Why does someone preach strict morality, yet behave immorally themselves—or demand behavior from others that they do not follow in politics, religion, or everyday life?

Why do people set public moral standards but follow them only when it benefits or serves their interests? Why do individuals feel pressure to conform to certain moral norms outwardly, even if they don’t personally believe in them or want to follow them?

Why might a person be unaware of their own contradictory behavior, or try to justify it to themselves through various rationalizations? Why are certain moral values so deeply embedded in communities or cultures that they are maintained externally, even if individuals do not find them personally meaningful?

Why is hypocrisy used as a means to maintain power or control over others, even though such behavior ultimately serves only self-interest?
And why does hypocrisy erode trust and credibility, causing conflict and distrust between individuals and groups?

No wonder the world stutters.

——

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX
Koloniestraße 120
13359 Berlin-Wedding
U-Bahn Osloer Straße

An Feiertagen ist die Toolbox geschlossen
On Bank holidays Toolbox is closed

Our duo exhibition is titled ”Ausgang – Exit”. Everyday definition of the word is ”an act of leaving a place” or ”a way out of a building”. For example there are ”Ausgang” signs in everywhere in metro stations and signs can save lives in the event of fire. The word exit also has deeper philosophical connotations. ”Exitus” comes from latin and means exit, ending, end or death. Our final exit is moving from on state to another, from life to death. The Nazis used the term with cruel irony, calling the entrance gate of Sachsenhausen concentration camp ”Eingang A” an the exit gate ”Ausgang Z”. There is also a desperate search for away out, exit, of the protracted wars in Ukraine an Gaza. In our exhibition, metaphora ”exit” leads the viewer to consider different ways of of exiting dead ends in front of Alexander Horn´s fascinating paintings and Ilkka Sariola´s large expressive coal drawings.

Alexander Horn lives and works in Mannheim and Ludwigshafen and Ilkka Sariola in Helsinki. We met each other for the first time year 2017 when we both took part in group exhibition ”Nachstein” at Projektraum Toolbox. Even then, a deep understanding arose between us an our art. This is our third duo exhibition in Germany.

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX
Koloniestraße 120
13359 Berlin-Wedding
U-Bahn Osloer Straße

An Feiertagen ist die Toolbox geschlossen
On Bank holidays Toolbox is closed

Ilkka Sariola, rom series Requiemm Hind & Shani, 230 x 150 cm, charcoal on paper, 2023-2025

Alexander Horn, aus der Serie Only the Rocks Remain

Juha Sääski & Henrik Jacob
Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX
28.3.-19.4. 2026
Opening 27.3. 2026, 7 pm

Open on Kolonie Weekend Sat: 28.3. 2–5 pm. Sun: 29.3. 2–5 pm

Opening hours: Tue–Fri: 2–6 pm

At the end of March, Finnish artist Juha Sääski and Berlin artist Henrik Jacob will present two works that complement each other and fundamentally change the gallery space.

Street view-street still lifes

Juha Sääski is exhibiting oil paintings which show day-time street views in sleeping places of homeless people in some cities. He is alienating the theme by painting the sleeping accessories, the matresses, blankets, the tents and clothes without the person itself. He is mixing them with street art imagery, sometimes also the person may be drawn with a fragile line either in front of his/her mattress, or on the wall , behind the tent, added in the middle of street art.
Often the mattresses, blankets and the tents are very joufully colourful in their gray and dirty surroundings. In the same time this contradiction contains a sad undertone and a human tragedy. The paintings could be described as street view-street still lifes with empathy towards hard life.

Berlin Wall – Another Berlin Wall

In his work “Berlin Wall,” Henrik Jacob also focuses on a peripheral area – a place not at the center of social life, yet one that reveals much about it – the so-called “silent place.” Referencing the floor tiles of the Toolbox Gallery, he extends them into the space and across the walls. He uses modeling clay to gradually insert the toilet wall of an original Berlin bar into the front corner of the gallery. Like Juha Sääski, he is interested in graffiti residue, tags, and stickers as signs of interpersonal communication. At the same time, his installation is an inventory of urban life that transforms, deconsecrates, and humorously expands the gallery’s white cube.

Enjoy to explore!

Warmly welcome to our next opening on Friday, 31. October 2025, at 7 pm

Exhibition: 2.–22.11.2025

Opening hours: Wed–Sat 3–7 pm

Kolonie Wedding Weekend open on Sunday, 2.11.2025 from 2–6 pm

Présage means to foretell or predict, often indicating a warning or sense of something about to happen – typically something unpleasant or unwelcome. It may also refer to an intuition or feeling of foreboding. Essentially, it is a sign anticipating an imminent event.
A certain unease exists in the works of Claudia Brieske and Michelle Lloyd. An underlying anxiety rises slowly, manifests itself quietly and looms.

In both artists’ work the pressure of pent-up, charged energy – be it from a seismographic, meteorological or other atmospheric force – declares its presence and requires relea
While the two artists’ interpretations emerge from different perspectives and artistic disciplines – video, sound and painting – they simultaneously focus on the tension of the frozen time fragment, just before the onset …
This présage is a disembodied future: it cannot be tangibly grasped, yet etches physical and psychological traces in the present nevertheless.

Artists

Michelle Lloyd and Claudia Brieske, both artists from the Mengerzeile studio house, are showing the painting cycle ‘ONSET’ and the video/sound installation ‘Falling Forward Slightly’, created in Istanbul, at the TOOLBOX gallery. This exhibition marks the start of an exchange between the TOOLBOX and Kunstraum m3 project spaces.

Jürgen Baumann, Dietrich Walther

Opening | Vernissage: Friday, 30.01.2026, 7 pm | 19 Uhr

Open on Kolonie Weekend: Saturday 31.01. and Sunday 01.02. : 2-5 pm | 14-17 Uhr

Exhibition | Ausstellungsdauer: 30.01.–22.02.2026

Finissage: 22.02.2026: 5 pm | 17 Uhr

Opening Times: Öffnungszeiten:
Friday and Saturday | Freitag und Samstag: 3–7 pm | 15–19 Uhr

Toolbox presents an exhibition with works from Jürgen Baumann and Dietrich Walther, both Berlin artists.

J. Baumann works in extreme proximity to the real object and thus defines a very small image section, while D. Walther draws his image sources as found footage from the depths of the World Wide Web, but limits the reduction of image information to content that is recognisable as a body.

Both of us allow our objects to undergo a transformation that, in the montage, creates something new as a tableau or even as a multi-part image that no longer has much to do with the original image source.

Both of us work with the human body, which, as we show it, can certainly create uncertainty and discomfort.

The recipients of these works must engage in an interplay between viewer and viewed, proximity and distance. They experience the deconstruction and reconstruction of human bodies and are ultimately encouraged to examine their own economy of attention, which is increasingly characterised by scrolling through a flood of images from the internet.

You are warmly welcome to our next opening.

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX presents an exhibition with:

Margret Holz, Berlin (Sculpture) and Pilvi Ojala, Finland (Collage, drawing)
25.34.–22.5. 2026
Opening Friday, 24.4. 2026, 7 pm

Open on Kolonie Weekend Sat: 25.4. 2–5 pm. Sun: 26.4. 2–5 pm

Opening hours: Tue–Fri 2–6 pm

Margret Holz

For decades, Margret Holz has devoted herself in her multifaceted work to the various effects of time on history, on the memory of historical and fictional places, and very tangibly as an influence on sculptural material. With the sculpture »Fallen shadow 01«, the sculptor shows a folded-down surface that exhibits amorphous, shadow-like shapes in deformed steel. What we see here is the slow and concentrated penetration of heat through fire into the material of steel, through the controlled and precise work of the sculptor. The formerly uniform surfaces deform under the power of the heat, and the color nuances of the shadows testify to the formative and also destructive, archaic power of fire. In Margret Holz’s minimalist sculptures, sculptural action materializes, which can be read both as a burn mark and as a metaphor of imprinted time for the unrepresentable shadows of history.

In her decades-long work, the shadows of memory materialize, become tangible and present, and cast a metaphorical light on possible future traces of crises of transnational and ecological entanglements, border demarcations, and the vulnerability of open social and natural systems.

Margret Holz, born in 1942, studied textile design at the University of Applied Sciences for Art and Design Hanover and painting and sculpture at the HdK Berlin, now UdK Berlin. Sculpture,
photography, and printmaking are the main areas of work. Exhibitions in Germany, Poland, France, Belgium and Switzerland. She lives and works in Berlin.
Margret Holz is a member of the German Artists’ Association, sculpture network, and the women artists’ network Frauenmuseum Berlin.
www.mabois.de
@margretholzbois (instagram)

Pilvi Ojala

As a visual artist, I have had the opportunity to experiment with different tools and materials very freely and I feel that I have found my own unique way of making art. Visual art has given me the opportunity to direct my interest in many different themes and subjects. I am for example interested in different ways of presenting things. Among other things, staging, illusions, artificiality and authenticity are themes that fascinate my mind.
For me, making art is not only a way to express myself, but also a way of perceiving the world and placing myself as a part of it. I am curious to try new things, and I often switch from one method and media to another, which may seem like an inability to concentrate to some, but for me it is a central motive for making art. During my career, I have moved between different methods and ways of presenting, guided by the theme at hand.
As an artist, I want to both continue the tradition and renew myself. Renewal can mean very small things, but it is essential for art to be satisfying to its creator and experiencer. What is important to me is making by hand and appreciating it, as well as general humanity and the attempt to understand the world by observing and paying attention to things. I utilize themes from art history, but I strive to transfer them to a contemporary framework and connect them to my own world of experience. Although my themes often move on the ground of melancholy, I hope that one can find there also warm humor and hope.

You are warmly welcome to our next opening.

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX presents an exhibition with:

Krista Autio, Brussels (Painting) and Fanny Spång, Berlin (Sculpture)
Exhibition: 30.5.– 19.6.2026
Opening Fri 29 May: 7–10 pm

Open on Kolonie Weekend
Sat 30 May: 2–5 pm
Sun 31 May: 2–5 pm

Opening hours: Tue–Fri 2–6 pm

Artwork (top) Krista Autio: Oil painting from the series Fleeting Happiness

I long for the land that is not,
because all that exists, I’m too weary to want.
The moon speaks to me in silvern runes
About the land that is not.
The land where all our dreams become wondrously fulfilled,
The land where all our fetters fall,
The land where we cool our bleeding forehead
In the dew of the moon.
My life was a burning illusion
But one thing I have found and one thing I have really won –
The road to the land that is not.

The Land That Is Not, poem by Edith Södergran

Krista Autio, painting

Fleeting happiness

Fleeting Happiness is a series of paintings about moments of happiness that pass quickly,
moments we miss, reminisce about, and long to experience again. These moments often
remain in our memories as something both melancholic and beautiful, almost ethereal. Such
feelings especially affect people who have left or lost their homeland due to different
circumstances. In today’s challenging world, we want to hold on to small, fleeting moments
of happiness. The paintings and sculptures in this exhibition relate to these fleeting
experiences, especially those connected to nature, memory, and a sense of belonging.

Krista Autio is a Finnish painter who lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.
Her work is thus influenced by the everyday lives, habits, daily rhythms and art from the
countries where she has lived–France, Spain, and Belgium–while maintaining an intrinsically
Finnish ethos of looking for the simple, essential qualities of a story or image.

Autio works primarily with oil paint at a large scale, creating multiple layers using a palette
knife. The works begin as process-based, meditative journeys into the true essence of colors
and often contain drawings and snippets of text. Later, she erases elements she deems
unnecessary, paring down the image to just one color, shape, or image.

Recently, her interest has been in Finnish happiness. She began to explore the concept of
happiness when the World Happiness Report had chosen Finland as the happiest country in
the world several times. Her first exhibition on this topic was in the fall of 2024
”Where is the fucking happiness?” at NOoSPHERE Arts, NYC.

Her works have been exhibited in Finland, Belgium, Spain, France, the Netherlands,
Luxembourg, and the United States. Autio founded the contemporary art project space K41
nordiKey in Brussels in 2017, where she works as a curator. The space mainly showcases
the works of Nordic contemporary artists living in Belgium

Fanny Spång, sculpture

High Line Park Is a Good Place to Cry

High Line Park Is a Good Place to Cry is a sculptural installation originally created as a
commentary on the Kingsland Wildflowers project (Greenpoint, New York) and humanity’s
efforts to reconstruct nature as an act of resilience. It explores the importance of nature in
grieving and processing emotions, as well as the longing for nature in urban environments.
In doing so, the installation underscores the close connection between sustainable practices
and nurturing our well-being..

The inspiration for this project stemmed from a friend who once remarked, “I like the High
Line; I go there sometimes to cry. It’s a good place to cry.” These words became the starting
point and inspiration for the project’s title and theme: human efforts to restore nature, the
importance of natural spaces for emotional processing, the desire to reconnect with the body
through nature, and the resilience found in these connections. The sculptural work itself is
composed of real flowers encased in pigmented epoxy resin, supported by plexiglass
stands, metal wires, and a steel base.

Fanny Spång works within a multidisciplinary practice spanning sculpture, installation, and
animation. With a deep fascination for nature and science, she explores organic textures
through artificial materials, investigating how sculptural objects can transform our experience
of space. Her installations unfold through a detailed, slightly distorted surrealism, exploring
states of being and transformation.

She holds an MFA in Design from HDK–Valand, Academy of Art and Design in Gothenburg,
and studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York during her BFA. Her work has been
shown in Sweden, USA, Germany, and the Czech Republic. As a designer, she has created
book covers for publishers throughout Scandinavia. Originally from Sweden, she is based in
Berlin, where she works and co-runs the artist-run space Schützenverein.

Krista Autio and Fanny Spång met during an artist residency at Mothership, New York, in
the fall of 2024. They both presented exhibitions at NOoSPHERE Arts alongside the
residency. During the residency, they engaged in ongoing conversations about art and how
their northern homelands have shaped their worldview and artistic practices. It was also at
this time that they began developing their respective projects, making this renewed
presentation of their works together a natural continuation of an ongoing dialogue.

Center for Uncomfortable Truths.

During the last years the world seems to have gone irrevocably crazy. Russia invaded Ukraine and war broke out in Gaza. Finland (2023) and Sweden (2024) hastily joined NATO. In 2025, Finland withdrew from the Ottawa Treaty (the Mine Ban Treaty). North Korea joined the fight against Ukraine. Trump attacked Iran. A new Cold War began. North Korean and Russian missiles are aimed at NATO powers, then at us.

In Helsinki, I heard people talking carelessly on the local train about Putin’s bombings, so when will it happen here (in Finland)… Finnish Broadcasting Corporation (YLE) has been showing films and documentaries about the war for several years now. When I watch Finnish Broadcasting Corporation’s (YLE´s) programs, it inevitably occurs to me that we Finns are preparing for war. Concrete preparations are already underway: for example, the Finnish explosives manufacturer Forcit is building a TNT explosives factory in Pori, Finland, from which there is also enough material for anti-personnel mines.

In Finland, the general mood has changed to a pro-armament one in a couple of years. Weapons have been given a positive label. Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, is once again relevant. The film is a political satire and black comedy about the shadow of the bomb. India’s first successful nuclear test on May 18, 1974, was named Smiling Buddha, which the US military intelligence codenamed “Happy Krishna.” Why do missiles and bombs smile? Where does this schizophrenia come from? What makes us smile on the verge of self-destruction?

However, we do not have to agree with this prevailing narrative. We can think differently. But amidst this darkness there is light, which can be found in people’s hearts and the lust for life they have. Every person is a light in this darkness. Dark times create a context for life, but we should overcome this gloom with joy of life, which is what this exhibition aims to do. Joy should be found in every day in the studio and glimpses of joy should be found in every work done.

11.5.2026 in Glauburg-Stockheim, Jukka Korkeila.

About

Jukka Korkeila (born 1968, Hämeenlinna) is one of Finland’s foremost painters; his work has been exhibited in various museums and galleries around the world. He lives and works in three places: Berlin, Glauburg-Stockheim and Helsinki. Korkeila has participated in exhibitions around Europe, and all the major Nordic collections include his work. Korkeila has had solo exhibitions at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Nordic Watercolor Museum in Skärhamn, Sweden. In 2014–2015, Korkeila participated in the fourth Biennal del Fin del Mundo in Mar del Plata, Argentina. In 2017–2018, he participated in the extensive retrospective exhibition Pleasure at the Helsinki Art Museum, HAM, and the Serlachius Museum in Mänttä. In 2018, Korkeila’s work was included in the exhibition Sanguine/Bloedrood, curated by Luc Tuymans, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA) in Belgium. In 2019, Korkeila was awarded the Finnish State Prize for visual arts. In 2022, Korkeila participated in the Biennale Le Latitudini dell’Arte V ed. Sweden and Italy at Palazzo Ducale, Genoa, Italy, curated by Paul Thomassen. In 2022, Korkeila participated in the exhibition Dreamy at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland, curated by Max Hannus. In 2023, his paintings from Malmö Art Museum’s collection were included in the Happily Ever After exhibition at Malmö Art Museum, curated by Julia Björnberg and Anna Johansson. In 2024, the painting Art of Falling Apart from Moderna Museet’s collection was shown – at Den Tredje Handen, Maurizio Cattelan and Moderna Museet’s collection – exhibition at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, curated by Maurizio Cattelan. In 2025, Korkeila had a major retrospective exhibition, Pimeys on täynnä valoa (Darkness is full of light), at the Hämeenlinna Art Museum in Hämeenlinna, Finland, curated by Soile Ollikainen. The exhibition of the same name, Dunkelheit ist voller Licht (Darkness is full of light), coincided with Wolf & Galentz in Berlin last autumn.

Finnish Arts and Culture Authority, who have supported my work.

Michael Kirkham

The Small Tear/Eine Kleine Riss

This presentation entitled “Eine Kleine Riss( A Small Tear”) shows 4 small format paintings
alongside Jukka´s solo exhibition at Toolbox,- thematises how light escapes or streams
from screens, windows ,openings , orifices, and holes by the use of strong contrasting
negative colour schemes.
Text (including exerpts ,Interview with George Kratochvil March 22 2026)

“Vision functions a lot like a camera: when light enters the eye it is projected on to the optic
nerve by the lens. Photographs or films for example, are mechanical registrations of this
“raw optical material” but captured on digital or chemical plates. The traces left by the light
look realistic, they seem like true pictures of the world around us. (That they are
mechanically produced has led to them being somewhat fetishised as “the truth”— this has
of course been now undermined by Photoshop and AI etc).This is because our visual cortex
has learned how to turn them in to such .I want to use and refer to this “Objectivity” in my
paintings. The origin of using negative colours came out of this but mostly of colour
experiments. I´m sure some people might just see it as a “trick” , but actually all it is is using
a bright colour in the shadow, and then going from there. It takes the painting
immediately on to a quasi- abstract level and it is fascinating how skin colours appear in a
negative. They are not necessarily green. Also all the dirt on the surfaces is “lit-up”, and
anything that is a “hole” is also illuminated.. mouths for instance. It anyway allows a lot of
freedom in colour use , and can result in very weird colour combinations. It may also have
something to do with making a contradiction–a very bright but melancholy image.
Although rather skilled at it, at some point I developed an ambivalence to faithful,
naturalistic reproductions of figures from models etc.,even more so towards painting from
photographs. I eventually decided to work from nothing at all: No found photos, no models.
They would be “Projected Images” in the sense that I would try to visualise something that
was not there. Naturalism or Realism then become just certain qualities among others that
can be added or removed from a painting. A relationship with Surrealism became important
because of this, although it seemed to me that Surrealism had done it wrong. It was too
theoretical and their theories missed something. More specifically: Fantasy is not actually
removed from reality-as in a dream where you are not conscious, but that the division
between the products of the imagination and dreams is certainly more fluid. Anyone who
has ever taken hallucinogenic drugs can report how the visual cortex can be radically
interfered with. It’s a though the fabric or “matrix” of banal perception that we take for
granted ( in order to function normally )is easily cracked or torn, and it’s rather a shock ,
even a revelation to notice the extent to which our normal everyday perception of Reality is
actually a delicate and elaborate construction: a construction which must be constantly
maintained. So in a sense , even the banal act of visual perception is constantly affected and
intertwined with fantasy.. and therefore with all emotions. fear or desire for or of what you
see for example. To emphasise: It would be a Surrealism of the Banal, almost like a kind of
“Reality- Shift”.. but what does that look like? It’s got to be a visual thing, a quality of
visuality.. so it’s more a product of intuition.. not of the intellect . What I outlined here is
anyway not really a theory , it’s more of an approach. ..”
MK 2026

You are warmly welcome to our next opening.

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX presents the exhibition
Bright Glimmers on Sombre Hues

Artists: Peter Boué, Sampsa Indrén, Mika Karhu

Opening Fri 31 July 2026: 6–10 pm

Open on Kolonie Weekend
Sat 1.8.: 2–5 pm
Sun 2.8.: 2–5 pm

Exhibition: 1.–21.8.2026

Opening hours: Tue–Fri 2–6 pm1.8.–21.8.2026

Light never exists in isolation. It becomes perceptible only in its encounter with shadow. Likewise, the world does not disclose itself as a completed whole but through fractures, interruptions, and fleeting illuminations that emerge from the darker fabric of experience. Bright Glimmers on Sombre Hues explores these fragile moments—not as opposites to darkness, but as possibilities that arise from within it.

The works gathered in this exhibition resist reconciliation. They inhabit a terrain where meaning remains unfinished and reality refuses stable interpretation. Their luminous moments do not lead us beyond darkness; rather, they render its structure visible. Illumination here is neither revelation nor redemption, but a brief suspension in which the familiar world becomes estranged from itself, allowing another way of seeing to emerge.

In art, light is more than an optical phenomenon; it is a mode of thought. It marks the instant when habitual perception falters and experience opens toward what has not yet been named. The artwork offers no resolution. Instead, it constructs a space in which the world may be encountered anew—not as an object to be mastered, but as an event unfolding between material, memory, history, and perception. Meaning resides neither in the work nor in the viewer alone, but in the dynamic relation that continually forms between them.

Mika Karhu

Opening Fri 25 September 2026: 7–10 pm

Open on Kolonie Weekend
Sat 26.9.: 2–5 pm
Sun 27.9.: 2–5 pm

Exhibition: 25.9.-23.10.2026

Opening hours: Tue–Fri 2–6 pm

Finnish students bring their video works to Berlin. Die Zeit, wie sie an uns vorüberzieht is a collection of audiovisual works made by Aaro Lindberg, Jacques Appel, Leevi Pienihäkkinen, Mikael Rutkiewicz and Oona Pennanen. Each work brings their own piece to the puzzle of time and place. Where are we? When? Who are we? Now? Then?

The exhibition is part of the Associative Visual Storytelling course for Master students in the Film and Animation department at Aalto University, Finland. The course is led, and the exhibition is organized by visual artist and university pedagogue Dr. Mika Karhu.

Maximilian Latva, Finland

Ralf Tekaat, Berlin

Opening Fri 28 August 2026: 7–10 pm
Performance on the opening by Kainulainen & Latva at arround 8 pm

Kainulainen & Latva: Untitled (Pisstol) London, 2026
Future Ritual: DISCHARGE, hosted by IKLECTIK. Photo by Henri T

Open on Kolonie Weekend
Sat 29.8.: 2–5 pm
Sun 2308.: 2–5 pm

Exhibition: 29.8..–18.9.2026

Opening hours: Tue–Fri 2–6 pm

Maximilian Latva

Please Please Me is a series of drawings, made during 2026 with pencil and
craphite dust on paper.

artwork on top. Inner Beauty Pageant Runner-up, pencil and graphite dust on paper, 75 x 55 cm, 2026

Please Please Me. The smiling voice, the bouncy beat, over and over. That’s the
song I used to dance to, alone, as a kid. It was the only record with a pulse
among the few dusty vinyls my mom had, so I danced to it even though I didn’t
really like it. Maybe the rhythm let me escape the shame and pain in my body
for a while.

The record of my childhood got scratched early on. It keeps skipping back, and
the past becomes the present again and again. Paper scratches too. Pencil
drawing is raw and bare, hiding nothing. Graphite has no undo function,
mistakes can’t be completely erased, but they can lead to new things. These
imperfections become guides to my unconscious, revealing secrets I have no
words for.

Latva

CV;
Maximilian Latva (b. 1966) is a Finnish artist. Based in Helsinki, Latva works with
drawing, performance art and sound. As a performance artist, they have
collaborated with Katri Kainulainen in the duo Kainulainen & Latva since 2014. In
2026, Maximilian was granted a 5-year working grant by the Finnish Arts and
Culture Agency.
Link to Curriculum Vitae

Ralf Tekaat, Berlin

artworks, left: Augen meine (eyes mine), right: Rote zelle (Red cell)

Ralf Tekaat, born in 1970 in Bobingen, Germany, studied Visual Communication before studying Fine Arts at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen from 1997 to 2002 under Wolfgang Schmitz and Paco Knöller. After graduating, he continued his studies as a Meisterschüler (postgraduate master student) under Paco Knöller in 2002.
Since 2005, Tekaat has taught at both the Hochschule für Künste Bremen and the University of Bremen as part of several teaching appointments. His work has received various awards and grants, including a grant in 2017 for a working residency in Spitsbergen, Norway. In 2026, he is scheduled to undertake a working residency in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Tekaat lives and works in Berlin.

Tekaat’s artistic practice is primarily rooted in drawing and focuses predominantly on works on paper. In his large-scale pencil drawings, pictorial objects gradually emerge from densely layered cross-hatching, creating the impression of a slow, almost sedimentary process of construction. In contrast, his expansive wall installations shift the focus towards narrative structures. Here, Tekaat connects autobiographical fragments with images from collective memory, creating complex and multilayered visual spaces of narration.

In his installation Hidden Track, – shown at Toolbox – Tekaat addresses the early death of his mother. She died of cancer more than 30 years ago.

When he remembers her, he always sees her as she was when she was already ill, rather than as she was when she was still healthy and carefree. The period during which she was severely affected by cancer was actually short, but it has come to dominate his memory of her.

One evening, while watching the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night, he thought he saw his mother among the screaming crowd. Could it have been her? In 1963, in her early twenties, she spent an extended period in England as part of an exchange programme. The details of her time there had to remain secret, at least from her parents, even later on. This could explain why the concert was never spoken about either. Just as the illness was never talked about.
In the work, the illness is connected with and set against the music of the Beatles, which for Tekaat represents a so-called “safe place”.

In fragmentary moments, he recalls incidents from his childhood and adolescence with his mother. Moments in which the illness, which was otherwise never spoken about in his presence, gradually seeped into what had seemed to be an untroubled family life.
He tries to make the possibility that his mother really did have a brief, screaming, blissful appearance in that Beatles film seem real.

https://www.ralftekaat.de