We are excited to support Helsinki-based visual artist Tiina Pyykkinen’s participation at Z33’s upcoming exhibition Colour – Seeing Beyond Pigment.
Dates: 8.5.–24.8.2025
Location: Z33 – House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture, Bonnefantenstraat 1, 3500 Hasselt
Accessibility: Z33 strives to create an inclusive environment for all. Z33 offers accessible infrastructure for persons with limited mobility, from their exhibits to the restrooms and bar. Whether it’s physical accessibility, visual, auditory support, or other specific needs, Z33 is happy to work together to better facilitate your visit. You can contact the team before your visit by email at info@z33.be or by phone at +32 (0)11 29 59 60 (during opening hours).
Colour: Seeing Beyond Pigment
Pigments are everywhere. From paints to cosmetics and clothes, from everyday objects to your food and drinks, they literally add colour to life. Unfortunately, the pigment and dye industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world. In the search for natural alternatives, Laboratorium – the biolab for art, design and biotechnology at KASK & Conservatorium in Ghent – went a long way. Here, melanin proved to be a fascinating track. In Z33, researchers, designers and artists present show their results for the first time.
Melanin is found in our skin and determines our colour. But what few people know is that the pigment is also found in animals and has a very wide range of tones. Think of the wings of a butterfly or peacock feathers. Because of the structure in the wings on which light refracts, you can observe different colour tones. Can these natural solutions help us in the search for less polluting dyes? Several designers and artists got to work with this structural colour and are showing their work for the first time.
Inspired by nature, made by scientists
From petri dish to design
Amandine David & Heleen Sintobin, together with scientist María Boto Ordoñez, led the research project at KASK & Conservatory and found inspiration for their work in nature.
1548 Pennae is a plumage of ceramic plates bearing the new colour melanin. Up close, you can see how each piece bears the structure of a turkey feather. This is no accidental find, but a tribute to an ancient Mayan tradition, where the turkey played an important role.
How does melanin behave on paper? You will discover this in Entomo Colours, a series of origami beetles based on endangered or extinct species in Flanders. Where a traditional insect collection dwells on the past, this collection tells says something about biodiversity today. Finally, with Coral Colours, they bring to life the impact of climate change on the underwater world.
The works ask to be touched, but every touch destroys the colour. A paradoxical beauty.
Jewels on the wall
This is the best way to describe Ridges 1, 2 and 3 by Bram Vanderbeke. His aluminium wall sculptures show rhythmic lines and catch the light. As you move, the intensity of the colour changes, creating a play between the shape and its reflection. For her part, Belgian artist Ann Veronica Janssens is showing Future Forms of Beauty, where she manipulates transparent ribbed glass with a thin layer of synthetic melanin. She’s one of the only ones in this exhibition who already applies this technique in her art. Finland’s Tiina Pyykkinen subverts traditional painting with Disguised Messages. Her mirrored panels are a play of revealing and concealing, where shadows of trees shine through.
Geometric connectedness
A floating kite adorns the exhibition space. The colours on its surface range from blue and purple, to orange and yellow. For this, Dimitris Theocharis was inspired by the colours of a flying flock of starlings. He based the shape on a kite from 1907 by Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone.
No hard peelings
Humour and alienation go hand in hand with Dutch fashion designer Marlou Breuls. Where her rubber artwork approaches a cuddly human skin, the metallic blue-green colour enhances a strange feeling. The headpins she uses to hang it give it a sinister unease, as if you were looking at flayed human skin.
Participating artists and designers: Amandine David, Ann Veronica Janssens, Bram Vanderbeke, Dimitris Theocharis, Heleen Sintobin, Marlou Breuls, Tiina Pyykkinen
Curator: Annelies Thoelen
Scenography: Woman Cave Collective
In collaboration with: KASK & Conservatory (HOGENT – Howest), VUB (Sustainable Engeneering Materials Research Group) and UGent (Evolution and Optics of Nanostructures).
Laboratory, KASK & Conservatory’s biolab for art, design and biotechnology specializes in sustainable color production. The research project Ecology of Colour is developing a palette of structural color thanks to nanotechnology. Based on synthetic melanin, a color film is being developed to be applied to paper, metal, ceramics, glass, etc.
With the support of Saastamonen Foundation, Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux, Suomen Kulttuurirahasto. The research project Ecology of Colour is funded by the HOGENT Arts Research Fund.
About the artist
Tiina Pyykkinen (b. 1983) is a Helsinki-based visual artist who working primarily with paintings and installations. Her practice is focused on the themes of communication, individual and collective memory, and time and its disorder as a bodily experience.
Pyykkinen uses various combinations of material and light creating multi-layered works that engage in a dialogue with space, movement, and the viewer`s perceptual experience. Her works are temporal and spatial, in which visuality is in constant flux.
Pyykkinen graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2014. She was named as the Young Artist of the Year in 2017, an honor organized by the Tampere Art Museum and the City of Tampere. Her works have been exhibited in various exhibitions, for instance at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (2024), Tampere Art Museum (2024), Serlachius Museums (2024-2023), among others museums and galleries in Finland and across Europe. Her paintings are part of the collections such as the Saastamoinen Art Foundation (EMMA, Espoo Museum of Modern Art), Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Serlachius Museums, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation (Rovaniemi Art Museum), Tampere Art Museum and Maastricht University Collection in Netherlands, among others. Her latest site-specific work was completed in 2021 to the main façade of Nova, Jyväskylä Central Hospital.
Cover image: © Amandine David & Heleen Sintobin, 1548 Pennae