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Under Your Skin Curated by Raul Zamudio White Box, NY, NY March 22 – April 23, 2005 Artists: AXEL ANTAS-ELINA BROTHERUS-VELI GRANO-PIA LINDMAN-TEEMU MAKI- JAAKO NIEMELA-FANNI NIEMI-JUNKOLA-RIITTA PAIVALAINEN-ANU PENNANEN- ILPPO POHJOLA-RIIKO SAKKINEN-JUHA SUONPAA-SANTERI TUORI-ROI VAARA. The second installment of White Box's three-year series on Finnish art is titled Under Your Skin. The exhibition’s title is culled from a landmark 1966 film by the acclaimed Finnish director Mikko Niskanen. Niskanen’s film is a watershed in Finnish cinema in that it eschewed conventional formal structures as well as circumventing film studios by becoming the first independent work. The term "under your skin" also alludes to an English colloquialism that refers to something troubling, irritating or provocative to the point that it gets "under one's skin.” Taken together, both film title and idiom converge as metaphor for the interaction between Finland and the world beyond it that extends the theme of the first exhibition on Finnish art. Titled Finnish Tango, this initial exhibition cited Finland’s importation of Argentine dance and used this phenomenon as foil to address how Finnish artists absorb, translate and reconfigure influences from abroad into transnational art practices. In contrast, Under Your Skin looks at Finnish artists who work outside of their native country as well as within it. The resulting dialogue between the myriad geo-cultural points of reference from inside and outside, will underscore the global nature of Finnish art that is influenced by the locality of wherever it is made. It is through its malleable and absorbent nature that Finnish art undermines essentialism, and questions the mechanisms that construct nationalist discourses both within its own borders as well as where Finnish artists may work in the international arena -Raul Zamudio Link to exhibition review: http://www.newyorkartworld.com/reviews/under-your-skin.html