Visiting hours: Weekdays 13-18 Sat & Sun 11-18
Tarpaulin, tarp, canvas. Into its sanctuary I store, preserve, and save. I wrap myself into its dirty and deteriorating, tearing and plastic essence. In my cocoon I become human. When the night falls, I crawl silently to the crossroads of preserving and decaying and sit there until the morning comes.
Our incomprehensible mass of items and things is crammed into cities and storage halls, and at the same time we frantically accelerate the saving of our memories in the form of photos and videos onto hard drives and the cloud. As I work, I often wonder what the role of painting is between this wish of permanence and fear of loss.
I’m Rasmus Förster (1994), a Finnish German artist working in Helsinki/Muurame (MA, Aalto University, 2021). The past few years I have focused mainly on painting. For my paintings I also create a lot of drawings, polaroids and photos on film, as well as digital drawings and collages. Within my work I continuously approach questions about the uncertain future. How to navigate urban spaces in a time of worsening ecological crisis? Our time requires a re-evaluation of what being human is. In my artistic work I try to combine this ethos of change with more simple notions of what kind of creatures we are and what we aim for with our actions.