Camilla Vuorenmaa (b. 1979) is known as an artist who in many ways has challenged the physical and traditional boundaries of painting. Vuorenmaa’s carved wood paintings are hybrids of sculpture and painting that require time and physical strength to create. The style is rough and unvarnished, endowed with a playful decorativeness, the palette rich and striking. Some of the reliefs are like partitions, others feature elements of wall painting, a medium Vuorenmaa likes for its immediacy, momentariness and spatiality. Vuorenmaa depicts people and humanity in her work. She searches for motifs in magazines and books and by taking photographs of things she sees. Creating her latest works she feels increasingly important to meet and observe her subjects in authentic situations. For example at a residency programme in Iceland in autumn 2015, she found the common thread for her show in EMMA, Espoo modern art museum. There she got to accompany a fishing boat for one week and observed fishermen working at sea and in the face of fundamental questions.
Vuorenmaa was nominated as a candidate for Finland’s biggest art award Ars Fennica year 2017. The Fine Arts Academy of Finland awarded its 2015 prize to Camilla Vuorenmaa. Part of the prize was large solo exhibition in EMMA- Espoo Modern Art Museum. She was also awarded with International Solo Award in 2013, in Spring exhibition, at Copenhagen, Denmark. Vuorenmaa graduated from the Department of Painting at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts (Helsinki) in 2005.
Recent exhibitions include solo presentations at Gallery Forum Box, Helsinki, Finland (Arena,2017), EMMA- Espoo Modern Art Museum, Espoo, Finland (Sea separates us, 2016), Gallery C4 projects, Copenhagen, Denmark (Gladiator and other portraits, 2014), Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark (Spring Exhibition solo, 2014), Gallery Huuto, Helsinki, Finland (Hidden place, 2011), TM-gallery, Helsinki, Finland (Where is the afterparty, 2008).
Her work has also been shown as part of group exhibitions such as Gallery Thomassen, Göteborg , Sweden (In Belly of Painting, 2017), Landskrona Konstmuseum (Sensual Knowledge, 2017), Salo Art Museum, Salo, Finland ( New Narrative and Reader, 2015), Bury Art Museum & Sculpture Centre, Manchester, England ( New Narrative and Reader, 2015), Amos Andersons Art museum, Helsinki, Finland ( Shift in The Shadows, 2015), Edsvik Konsthall, Sollentuna, Sweden (Akvarellsalong, 2014), Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark (Spring Exhibition, 2013)