Zofia Kulik

Portraiture as Social Commentary

Opening: Friday, 17 November 2023, 6 – 8 pm

Exhibition: 18 November 2023 – 27 January 2024

Venue: Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 34–35, 10969 Berlin

Persons Projects is delighted to present the latest group exhibition titled Portraiture as Social Commentary; this exhibition not only highlights the different aspects of the genre but also links together a variety of artistic perspectives. A portrait is a painting, a photograph, a sculpture, or any other representation of a person in which the face and its expressions are predominant. They reveal the presence of the subject viewed from the perspective of the artist – a merger of contrasts between what’s projected by one and perceived by another. These images become mirrors of many faces that reflect both the political and cultural undercurrents relevant to the time period in which they were conceived.

The Veneer of Happiness

Ulla Jokisalo | Katarzyna Kozyra | KwieKulik | Dominik Lejman | Santeri Tuori

Opening: Friday, 3 March 2023, 6 – 8 pm

Exhibition: 3 March – 22 April 2023

Venue: Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 34, 10969 Berlin

Persons Projects is proud to present a group exhibition, The Veneer of Happiness. The show focuses on the various myths and stereotypes associated with how success equates with happiness. These collected works exemplify the art of observing and displaying various states of happiness through altered realities from different perspectives: While Dominik Lejman and Katarzyna Kozyra share a common interest in challenging common concepts of beauty, we experience another perspective in the work of KwieKulik and Ulla Jokisalo whose works question and confront how western culture bends reality to fit certain norms or expectations in politics, economics or gender that define our presumed narrative for what happiness should look like.

Notes from a Seamstress’ Daughter

Zofia Kulik | Anni Leppälä | Ragna Róbertsdóttir | Niina Vatanen

Opening: Friday, 11 March 2022, 6 – 8 pm

Exhibition: 12 March – 23 April 2022

Venue: Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 35, 10969 Berlin

Persons Projects is delighted to present a unique selection of female artists who share a common ground within their artistic practices as they all incorporate and draw from their own personal histories. Their work and overall creative development were influenced by a female presence that played a significant role in their upbringing. Under this aspect, this group exhibition intends to explore four different female perspectives and how they are joined together through the process of objectifying their own fears and doubts in their search for their own identity. Their artistic arsenal ranges from threads and pins to textile ornaments and patterns. Regardless of the materials used, the works collected in this exhibition reflect a tactile sensibility in the way the artists apply them.
Embroidery, sewing, and working with fabric are historically associated with women and ‘domestic tasks’, overlooking the intense skill and creativity required to create the artwork. But since the early days of Surrealism, these specific activities have been one of the tools used to characterize the feminist voice of discontent. Generations of female artists seeking to negate and escape society’s expectations consciously avoided this direction. Today, contemporary women artists are reusing these traditions in their artistic expression, referring to the repetition of daily activities as the basis of our existence.

Framed. Activities for the Camera

Grey Crawford | Hilla Kurki | KwieKulik | Józef Robakowski

Opening: Friday, 29 October 2021, 5 – 8 pm

Exhibition: 29 October 2021 – 5 March 2022

Venue: Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 35, 10969 Berlin

Persons Projects proudly presents the group exhibition Framed. Activities for the Camera, focusing on the correlation between performance and photography.
Performance as an art form, beginning in the mid-20th century, has been used and developed by contemporary artists through their use of photography as their primary tool for recording their ideas and actions. Understandably, performance art needs photography to be able to last. Yet, photography plays an even more important role, not only as a means for the documentation but especially when the performance is staged solely for the camera. This exhibition presents a selection of artists who recorded their actions specifically for this reason.

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Searching for the Shapes Within

Exhibition: 21 November 2020 – 6 March 2021
Venue: Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 35, 10969 Berlin

The Art World of the 1960-70’s experienced a healthy transformation in perception with the emergence of Performance and Land Art. These new modes of artistic expression challenged the traditional white cube scenario of what art is and how it should be exhibited. Using our natural environment as its own stage for creative interpretations in whatever form, helped in laying the foundations in how art is perceived in this century.
Searching for the Shapes Within is a group exhibition presented by Persons Projects, that focuses on the earth as a common base for these different artistic interventions. What we see, breathe and stand on is part of the natural world we build our state of being from. Yet in reality it’s a combination of numerous elements and shapes all converging together to form an environment that’s in constant flux. What all these artists share in common is a mutual sense for experimentation that creates new frames for thought. Their works form a 50-year timeline, beginning in the early 1970’s up until the present, that engages in a joined dialogue that spans from California, Iceland, Finland, Poland to Israel

Mikko Rikala | Paradigms of Chance

We are pleased to present Paradigms of Chance, Mikko Rikala’s second solo exhibition at Persons Projects | Helsinki School that continues his research into spatiality and temporality emerging from both philosophical and scientific nature related thoughts and practices.

Exhibition: 21 November 2020 – 6 March 2021
Venue: Persons Projects | Helsinki School, Lindenstr. 34, 10969 Berlin

The exhibition’s most prolific group of works A Year in My Pocket, features photographs that Rikala took over four seasons from specific places in the Finnish archipelago, where he focuses on the water in its various seasonal cycles. He subsequently prints and folds one photograph for each season and places it in his pocket, which he then carries throughout that season. Every so often he would pull out the trousered photograph to document its transformation and condition, then place it back into his pocket. Like the memories we keep in our heads, the image is transformed over time through its everyday use of being transported and carried.

Mikko Rikala is an artist who uses the photographic process as tool for gathering and recording material to help him in his philosophical pursuit of finding different ways to explore what’s behind the rational self. Rikala states, "I’m trying to uncover the relationship between what is seen as rational on one hand and what is perceived as irrational on the other.” His work is a reflection that merges mystical and philosophical thoughts through the empirical process of observation. Unlike his previous works, where he used the photographic process to record the now and then, these new pieces focus on the mysteries that lie beneath the unseen. He asks, "What are the possibilities for a person to observe and understand the world beyond the rational mind?”