Still Life with Flowers
a decoloured flower bouquet and its distilled colour pigments, isomalt, glass, metal, cement
2022–2025, various dimensions
The artist extracted colours from the different flowers of a bouquet, leaving the plants pale and colourless. The distilled colour pigments were then conserved in transparent isomalt and displayed in laboratory glass vessels alongside the now-white bouquet.
In traditional still-life paintings, the painted colours of blossoms captured a moment in time and 'defeated' death. In Still Life with Flowers, Salonen reinterprets this tradition by poetically separating the life energy (the preserved colour) from its empty, pale body (the decoloured flower).
Thanks:
Artwork photos: for ARCOmadrid, The Finnish Institute and Galerie Jochen Hempel, 2022–2025 / Photographer: Joe Clark
Exhibition view: Galerie Jochen Hempel, Leipzig, 2026 / Photographer: Björn Siebert
a decoloured flower bouquet (blue and lilac alpine delphiniums, orange and red gladioli, and yellow safflowers) and its distilled colour pigments, isomalt, glass, metal, cement
2025, 150×140×30 cm
a decoloured flower bouquet (chinese delphiniums, alpine delphiniums, eucalyptus, safflowers, and roses) and its distilled colour pigments, isomalt, glass, metal, cement
2023, 150×140×30 cm
a decoloured flower bouquet (chinese delphiniums, alpine delphiniums, eucalyptus, safflowers, and roses) and its distilled colour pigments, isomalt, glass, metal, cement
2022–2023, 150×150×30 cm