Pastilleja
Anni Kostamovaara
3400 €
Pastilleja
81 × 120 × 4 cm
Morning rush hour
Anni Kostamovaara
3400 €
Anni Kostamovaara
Oil on MDF board
65 x 50 cm
2024
Price incl. taxes
The Ghost Town is a stage on which each of us takes centre stage the moment we step through the door. It consists of movement, encounters and absences. The paintings invite us to observe our surroundings as if from the sidelines, as if frozen in time.
This series of works captures moments that feel familiar, yet distant. Amidst the bustle of the city, people in their clothes create a visual rhythm, and our attention is drawn not to faces but to gestures, backs and clothing, and to glances that do not meet. The figures in the paintings – sometimes present, sometimes turned away – form a gallery of the city’s inhabitants. They are passers-by whose stories remain unfinished.
The exhibition’s title, Ghost Town, refers to the sense that people and places become memories the moment we pass them by. It is a depiction of shared loneliness and the silence that prevails in the liminal spaces between rush-hour crowds, waiting rooms and journeys to school – the moment before departure or after arrival.
Who are the people who walk past you every day, and to whom you are just another passer-by? ‘Ghost Town’ invites you to pause and reflect on the stories we fail to notice in the rush of everyday life.
Anni Kostamovaara works in her studio in the Roihupelto artists’ quarter in Helsinki. Her works are generally realistic portraits in one way or another, yet they are almost invariably faceless or unidentifiable. If the face remains unseen, could a particular posture, gesture, or even way of walking become the recognisable element—the unique essence that each of us possesses?
In her work, Kostamovaara challenges the boundaries of portraiture: how much can be removed from an image while it still remains representational? Questions of identity, individuality, and the experience of separateness form part of the thematic framework of her paintings.
Kostamovaara was selected as Konst & Form’s Young Artist of the Month in spring 2023. Her exhibition attracted considerable public interest, with its meticulously detailed yet deliberately anonymised portraits resonating with many viewers.
Pastilleja
Anni Kostamovaara
3400 €
Morning rush hour
Anni Kostamovaara
3400 €