Elina Vainio: Memory Palace

Beeswax is known in the history of Western philosophy as a material through which the relationship between form, matter, and perception has been examined. Elina Vainio's exhibition approaches it differently: wax is a surface layer on a serial work that does not leave unchanged what it fastens and protects - and in doing so makes visible that the image is always somewhat helpless as a condition of human experience.

The works begin with photographs taken on a phone of reflections from bent mirror film. The printed images are attached to steel plate with a thin layer of beeswax, and through repeated treatments, the coating creates a form that moves away from the photograph's original photographic surface. In Vainio's examination, the image's deviations do not point to disturbance but reveal an absurd aesthetic of human existence.

The exhibition's themes are layered and interrupted perceptual experience, memory images composed of breaks, and embodiment tied to words yet constantly torn apart.

Photography Gallery Hippolyte, 11.9.-11.10.2026. Tue-Fri 12.00-17.00, Sat-Sun 12.00-16.00. Free admission.