‘Into The Cobalt Night Sanity Escapes’ on view as part of The Armory Show art fair as part of Galerie Forsblom’s booth in New York, United States in September, 2024. Photo: Toni R. Toivonen
In 2024, Frame’s grants enabled 147 international projects of Finnish contemporary art around the world. For our annual report, we asked grantees Pekka and Teija Isorättyä, Inari Sandell, and Toni R. Toivonen to share experiences on their international presentations. Toni R. Toivonen took part in the Armory Show art fair in New York and published an art book.
The grant I received from Frame enabled me to participate in the Armory Show art fair in New York as part of Galerie Forsblom’s presentation in September 2024. My works were displayed in a central location, and the grant made it possible for me to be present. I have made an effort to be present when my work is shown in different contexts. It helps me to get a sense of the local art scene and find the right paths while building my international career.
Above all, being on site helps you to understand how your own artistic work fits into the international art scene. Big art fairs provide valuable insights into current trends in galleries and the art scenes around the world. Reunions with collectors, artists, and curators, as well as making new contacts, have been productive. My artwork attracted a lot of interest in the United States, which led to my work being exhibited at the Miami Art Fair shortly afterwards. Through these events, my works have found their way into US art collections, broadening my artistic visibility. Presence at the fair and personal encounters have been crucial to the creation of new projects. In addition to the fair, I visited art museums in New York.
“Presence at the fair and personal encounters
have been crucial to the creation of new projects.”
Photo: Ken Hermann
Frame also supported the publication of my art book with a grant. It is the first comprehensive publication documenting my unique working process over the last ten years. It is not a catalogue, but an extensive collection of over 100 large-scale images of works, and four conversations from different perspectives: with two art museum directors, an art collector, and an author.
The grant enabled the publication to be of high quality and representative of my artistic style. The book plays an important role in my international activities: it acts as a kind of business card for potential partners and helps to deepen the international discussion. It allows me to effectively showcase the artistic process and its themes to curators and museum representatives, for example.
From the very beginning, I have aimed for an international career. I aim to present my artistic work to the widest possible audience. I have learned that even small projects can open doors to big opportunities.
For example, in Vienna with Collectors Agenda, I once held the smallest exhibition of my career, but I committed to it fully. This led to the interest of two Central European curators and several international projects. These contacts have later led to an exhibition at the Frankfurter Kunstverein in 2024–2025, which was my largest international institutional exhibition to date. It included both a retrospective and new works. It is also noteworthy that institutional visibility of this magnitude took place abroad before at the national level.
The Chart Art Fair in Denmark in 2017 is also memorable: it was my first art fair experience where I was able to present my art as a solo exhibition and participate in the event on-site. During one weekend, several long-lasting contacts were made, which have led to documentary film production, new art fairs, and several other projects. Ultimately, career development is about interacting with individuals who are passionate about a common shared cause.
– Toni R. Toivonen, Visual artist
You can read more about Frame’s programme, as well as a complete list of the Frame-supported projects, from our Annual Report 2024.