You are warmly welcome to our next opening.

Galerie/Projektraum TOOLBOX presents an exhibition with:

Krista Autio, Brussels (Painting) and Fanny Spång, Berlin (Sculpture)
Exhibition: 30.5.– 19.6.2026
Opening Fri 29 May: 7–10 pm

Open on Kolonie Weekend
Sat 30 May: 2–5 pm
Sun 31 May: 2–5 pm

Opening hours: Tue–Fri 2–6 pm

Artwork (top) Krista Autio: Oil painting from the series Fleeting Happiness

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I long for the land that is not,
because all that exists, I’m too weary to want.
The moon speaks to me in silvern runes
About the land that is not.
The land where all our dreams become wondrously fulfilled,
The land where all our fetters fall,
The land where we cool our bleeding forehead
In the dew of the moon.
My life was a burning illusion
But one thing I have found and one thing I have really won –
The road to the land that is not.

The Land That Is Not, poem by Edith Södergran

Krista Autio, painting

Fleeting happiness

Fleeting Happiness is a series of paintings about moments of happiness that pass quickly,
moments we miss, reminisce about, and long to experience again. These moments often
remain in our memories as something both melancholic and beautiful, almost ethereal. Such
feelings especially affect people who have left or lost their homeland due to different
circumstances. In today’s challenging world, we want to hold on to small, fleeting moments
of happiness. The paintings and sculptures in this exhibition relate to these fleeting
experiences, especially those connected to nature, memory, and a sense of belonging.

Krista Autio is a Finnish painter who lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.
Her work is thus influenced by the everyday lives, habits, daily rhythms and art from the
countries where she has lived–France, Spain, and Belgium–while maintaining an intrinsically
Finnish ethos of looking for the simple, essential qualities of a story or image.

Autio works primarily with oil paint at a large scale, creating multiple layers using a palette
knife. The works begin as process-based, meditative journeys into the true essence of colors
and often contain drawings and snippets of text. Later, she erases elements she deems
unnecessary, paring down the image to just one color, shape, or image.

Recently, her interest has been in Finnish happiness. She began to explore the concept of
happiness when the World Happiness Report had chosen Finland as the happiest country in
the world several times. Her first exhibition on this topic was in the fall of 2024
”Where is the fucking happiness?” at NOoSPHERE Arts, NYC.

Her works have been exhibited in Finland, Belgium, Spain, France, the Netherlands,
Luxembourg, and the United States. Autio founded the contemporary art project space K41
nordiKey in Brussels in 2017, where she works as a curator. The space mainly showcases
the works of Nordic contemporary artists living in Belgium

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Fanny Spång High Line Park Is a Good Place to Cry, Plexiglass, flowers encased in pigmented epoxy resin, metal wires, steel base.

Fanny Spång, sculpture

High Line Park Is a Good Place to Cry

High Line Park Is a Good Place to Cry is a sculptural installation originally created as a
commentary on the Kingsland Wildflowers project (Greenpoint, New York) and humanity’s
efforts to reconstruct nature as an act of resilience. It explores the importance of nature in
grieving and processing emotions, as well as the longing for nature in urban environments.
In doing so, the installation underscores the close connection between sustainable practices
and nurturing our well-being..

The inspiration for this project stemmed from a friend who once remarked, “I like the High
Line; I go there sometimes to cry. It’s a good place to cry.” These words became the starting
point and inspiration for the project’s title and theme: human efforts to restore nature, the
importance of natural spaces for emotional processing, the desire to reconnect with the body
through nature, and the resilience found in these connections. The sculptural work itself is
composed of real flowers encased in pigmented epoxy resin, supported by plexiglass
stands, metal wires, and a steel base.

Fanny Spång works within a multidisciplinary practice spanning sculpture, installation, and
animation. With a deep fascination for nature and science, she explores organic textures
through artificial materials, investigating how sculptural objects can transform our experience
of space. Her installations unfold through a detailed, slightly distorted surrealism, exploring
states of being and transformation.

She holds an MFA in Design from HDK–Valand, Academy of Art and Design in Gothenburg,
and studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York during her BFA. Her work has been
shown in Sweden, USA, Germany, and the Czech Republic. As a designer, she has created
book covers for publishers throughout Scandinavia. Originally from Sweden, she is based in
Berlin, where she works and co-runs the artist-run space Schützenverein.

Krista Autio and Fanny Spång met during an artist residency at Mothership, New York, in
the fall of 2024. They both presented exhibitions at NOoSPHERE Arts alongside the
residency. During the residency, they engaged in ongoing conversations about art and how
their northern homelands have shaped their worldview and artistic practices. It was also at
this time that they began developing their respective projects, making this renewed
presentation of their works together a natural continuation of an ongoing dialogue.