Minna Louhelainen

Basic information

b. 1984, Helsinki
Visual artist, printmaker
Residence: Lahti

Contact information

Phone number: 0505456445

Artist’s Statement

I see myself as a craftsman philosopher and a hopeless humorist, who creates, organizes and presents fragments of the world. I use my art to humbly map out the universe, human consciousness and the relationship of chaos and order. As my instruments to measure heavens and earths [sic] I borrow freely and unscrupulously from different fields of study, such as medicine, mineralogy and mathematics.

Currently I'm in love with making pixel graphics via methods of oldschool printmaking, thus building bridges between digital perfection and the analog nature of the human touch.
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Bio

I was born in Helsinki in 1984. I spent my childhood in Mikkeli and roughly my 20s in Kuopio. I also spent a few years in Espoo; currently I live and work in Nikkilä, Lahti. However, I still mostly identify as a general Savonian.

I'm a former bachelor of medicine, who - after a lot of sour soul-searching - decided to switch careers. I graduated from Lahti Polytechnic's Institute of Fine Arts in 2016. During my studies I focused on printmaking; this focus has remained.

My main interest is creating small-scale collage works in series, often utilizing different printmaking methods in the process. I'm infatuated with how experiencing them is a process of reduction: a chaos is slowly simplified into something more or less coherent.

I use both paper and wood in my collages. My raw materials include fragments from old paintings, prints, photos and old maps. Most of the collage material is use is cut from old works of mine, such as prints with imperfections.

When making prints, I mainly work with intaglio techniques, collagraph and carborundum. I also draw often. Computers are a dear, lifelong hobby of mine, so I utilize digital image processing a lot, often creatively conjoined with analog methods of producing images. I also write a good deal; in the future I hope to further combine my poetry with my visual art.

I mainly work with human-sized but universal subjects: I'm especially interested in the study of consciousness and the formation of memories. Social issues - such as politics or the environment - hold no interest for me at all as an artist.

(11.1.2019)