PRESS COMMENTS

- Bambu Hellstedt captured impressions, fairy tales, sagas and and dreams, by coupling real, stylized objects with figurations evoking trolls, the enigmatic imps. In her paintings there is a mixture of play, sentiment, love, harassing and hardly perceptible scenes: objects from everyday life, cars, cats, the angel-cat, frontline figures and the partly hidden images to perceive in a magic depth, where human beings look like ectoplasms. Her mixed technique - pen, pastel, oil, even graphite - conveys a joyous sense with very bright colours, where lively red and fuchsia stand out, with marked shadings. In such a rarity of figurative research one can see a transparency of Jean Dubuffet's "Art Brut" (1947), which expressed a spontaneity devoid of aesthetic foundations, mostly for infantile designs, graphic expressions drawn from walls, recovering an interest for primitive art, well expressed by the "Fauves" and the automatism of the surrealists.

Annamaria Masieri, 2004 Art Critic, Florence, Italy

- The paintings made by Bambu Hellstedt in Florence explode with colours and emotions - with a sense of humour.

Bianca Grasbeck, Ny Tid 9-10, 2004

- Bambu Hellstedt has succeeded exceptionally with her exhibition of paintings made in Florence. The paintings are not very large but there is a lot to see in them. She paints rollercosters of emotions stirred by Mediterranean environment and its colours, smells and touches.

Helsingin Sanomat Weekly Magazine 27.2.-4.3.2004, Jaakko Yli-Lassila

- Hellstedt's larger paintings are also lively. Many of them remind of sketches that have only just been ripped out of her sketchbook. This has an infectuous, cheerful effect on the viewer.

- Hellstedt is skilful in capturing shades of colour and its atmosphere. She combines colour and composition; dishes and other objects float across a background 'blanket'. Even the still lives appear to gain a sense of movement in Bambu Hellstedt's hands.

Helsingin Sanomat 26.2.2004, Anne Rouhiainen

- Finnish Bambu Hellsted has created pictures of the bustle of the world with a thick brush, giving an impressive form to the everyday chaos. Like an outsider, she looks at the delights of the street and the mental distress of human mind in her artwork, glowing full of life.

The entities created by Hellstedt seem to be the most hilarious artworks of the exhibition, since they give the viewer the possibility to find surprising details and search for oneself and not only for the paintings themselves.

A.K. Etelän Uutiset/Etelä Uusimaa, 2002 in the article "The Fifth Exhibition of FACES Gives Creative Enhusiasm"
Glowing purple, gorgeous pink and deep turquoise transcend variations of green and blue. Hellstedt is a master in combining nature, culture and urban European everyday life into stylistically brilliant paintings.

Helsingin Sanomat 7.10.2002, Anne Rouhiainen