Shithole Stories / Tomi Asikainen / Alesha

SHITHOLE STORIES

is not an uptight statement.

Shithole Stories is a vulgar representation of everyday realism and chaotic decay romantics, covered with yellow-brown humor. The droppings consist of random shots and views: the duck buddy, a woman pushing into the toilet and World´s happiest place for pee.

Shithole Stories’ excrements are composed of Uniqeco´s murals and Head Like a Glory Hole’s photographic art, as well as joint installations.

Uniqeco is a brand of the visual artist Leena Tuomanen. Uniqeco’s murals have been seen, for example, at the Concrete Urban Art 2021 festivals at Kera Halls in Espoo, at Palma Art Night 2021 in Nummela and at the Tiksin Patio in the summer 2021, in Vantaa.

@uniqeco

Head Like a Glory Hole is an art project started in 2021. The couple in the background produce sewer romantic shots, from the dark north of happy people and yellow snow. The art combines photography, space-bound performance, and storytelling.

@headlikeagloryhole

Tomi Asikainen “Behind the Scenes”

The exhibition opens a curtain to another kind of world. To the world of rust, demolition waste, paint dust and behind the demolition site machines. To the boundary between new and old. To a mixture of indiscriminate vandalism and appreciated art form. To makers, witnesses, enablers, preventers. To stiffness of town planning and power of money. To security guards and documentors. The photos are printed to surfaces found from wastelands and demolition sites and buildings.

Tomi Asikainen (1974) is a graphic designer, a photographer and a handcrafter from Helsinki, Tapanila. In his photography Asikainen deals with boundaries between current and past through places and situations, in which a normal person does not wander. Asikainen has graduated as a graphic designer in marketing in 1996. He started to paint graffitis and photographing in 1986. His works have been awarded for example in London and New York. Pictures and works by Asikainen have been presented in multiple books and magazines, in Helsinki graffiti (Tuomas Jääskeläinen & Anne Isomursu), Perintö (Antti Kalakivi), Helsingin Sanomat, Arkkitehti-magazine, Kauppalehti, Markkinointi&Mainonta, Suomen Kuvalehti. Asikainen is working in an international human rights organization as a leading visual designer in his day job. 

@tomiasikainen_photograff

Alesha “Stroke”

Stroke series is a way I can play with surfaces and colors. I am not in control of the process beside the colors and places I chose. It’s like a ritual: cycling around looking for a location, taking pictures and figuring out which color pallet to choose, then I have to wait till I get enough money for the cans.

After it’s all done I sit down on my bicycle, with one hand I control the wheel and in the other I am holding that metall stick (as it’s way too long/heavy to put it in a bag) and then I go to the location around 4-5 a.m, so no one can bother me.

Sometimes my “painting machine” is so heavy that I barely can hold it in the air, sometimes my cans are expired and paint is acting weird.

This project is all about the process as my studio work is very monotone and precise. For me the streets are like a playground where I can try out something completely weird and forget about it.

Art for me is primarily a way to speak from the first and third person at the same time. When a work is created, it becomes both a personal and impersonal statement that exposes the (cultural, political, social) structures of the surrounding reality. With this approach, the idea is more primary than the form, so my work is realized in completely different mediums. I paint, create conceptual objects, shoot video art, tattoos and go out into the streets with street art projects.

Street art is the field of art in which my first (perhaps most famous) works were realized. But at the moment, street art is only one of my areas of activity. Along with the transition to other forms of art, I began to use new materials when creating works. In particular, when creating paintings, I went from spray cans and markers to acrylic and further to oil. Art is not concrete works, but a process. Reality is changeable, and together with reality my approaches to fixing and displaying it change and mutate.

thealeshaart.com

@thealeshaart