ART-PRESENTATION: Ars Fennica 2017
Established in 1990, the aim of Henna and Pertti Niemistö Art Foundation is to promote the visual arts and opens up new avenues for Finnish art in the international arena. The Foundation awards the Ars Fennica prize to artists in recognition of distinctive creative work of exceptional quality.The prizewinner is chosen in two phases. An award panel appointed by the Foundation selects the candidates, after which an international art expert invited by the award panel chooses the winner from among the candidates. The award is worth €40,000 and includes an exhibition and an e-book.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Kiasma Archive
The Ars Fennica Award presented by the Henna and Pertti Niemistö Art Foundation is now in its 23rd year. The candidates show their work in a group exhibition hosted for the fifth time by Helsinki’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiasma. The winner will be selected by Beatrix Ruf, Director of the Stedelijk Museum, who will evaluate the candidates’ work at the Kiasma exhibition. The Ars Fennica jury has selected five nominees for the 2017 Ars Fennica Award, including one artist duo, bringing the total number of candidates to six. The artists nominated this year are: Maija Blåfield, Pekka & Teija Isorättyä, Perttu Saksa, Kari Vehosalo and Camilla Vuorenmaa. The public can vote for their favourite at the exhibition. The winner of the award and the audience favourite will both be announced in February 2018. Maija Blåfield is a documentarist and story-teller. The Ars Fennica exhibition features “On Destruction and Preservation”, an episodic film patched together from many separate stories. Language has focal emphasis in Blåfield’s art. Her works are emphatically narrative, and the storyline or mode of narrative is foregrounded in her oeuvre. Blåfield believes that destruction is a subject that cannot be discussed without also addressing the theme of preservation. Her tales are laced with comedy, which she sees as an inherent part of human life, and the film would not be the same without the irresistibly likeable protagonists, who make the theme more relatable and approachable. The film reminds us that even when something is irreversibly destroyed, we can always cherish memories of moments we have experienced in the past. Pekka & Teija Isorättyä weave together art and technology, though not in the manner of modernist machine aesthetics, but in fusions better described as ‘electromechanical bio-art’. In their inimitable way, they reflect on the future of humanity and its interfaces with machines and nature. “Nature Morte” is a kinetic installation constructed especially for the Ars Fennica exhibition, representing the conceptual and strategic culmination of their prior artistic work to date. The installation interweaves real and mechanical flowers, along with over 80 kilograms of surgical instruments, each piece with its own distinct history. Playful yet profound, “Nature Morte” is a reminder of the hope, consciousness and transcendence bestowed by art, liberating us from our fears and helping us to lead a full life in the face of the uncertainties of the modern age. Perttu Saksa takes a special interest in art history and the historical functions of photography, incorporating the particular historical and instrumental properties of the photograph as part of his practice. Originally a documentary photographer, Saksa has subsequently moved on to the domain of contemporary art and conceptual image-making. Animal motifs are among his long-term thematic preoccupations, and his photographs mirror the world through the viewpoint of animals. “Apple Mouth” one of his new pieces debuting at the Ars Fennica exhibition, highlights the human tendency to treat animals as raw material. At the same time, we viewers are brought face to face with something that is literally inside us, consumed within us, thereby reminding us of our own mortality. The white marbling effect brings the subject uncomfortably close, exposing it with a greater degree of intimacy than if it were drenched in blood. The animal meets our gaze head-on, as our equal, evoking a hint of sexuality and sense of recognition, provoking our desire to look – and ultimately also to touch. Kari Vehosalo stages a performative spectacle weaving together multiple layers of western cultural history, psychopathology and western trauma culture with an extreme degree of photographic and philosophical precision. The grey tonal scale interprets human gestures with infinite exactitude, allowing a hint of humanity to glimmer through the intense drama in fleeting hints, painful jabs and passing pangs. The Ars Fennica exhibition features a theatre-like space in which viewers may choose where and how to position themselves. “Baroque of Violence (The auto-Erotic Decapitation of Jayne Mansfield)” is a triptych that lends itself to multiple planes of interpretation, with each component forming its own separate frame of reference. The stage set is extravagantly baroque yet logically rigorous, traversed by lines of paint and various levels of meaning. “Unabomber Home” and “Mother as a Tomb” are representations of loneliness and silence, their ominous gazes dredging up the history of western psychopathology. Camilla Vuorenmaa often portrays individuals who are curled up in a self-absorbed state, or deeply immersed in whatever they are feeling or doing. Many of her works are based on a photograph or other visual memento that the artist reinterprets by highlighting details carrying personal significance. The Ars Fennica exhibition debuts “Tomb”, an installation inspired by the floor-to-ceiling paintings and engravings found in ancient Egyptian tombs. The figures featured in the installation are borrowed from various legends, stories and historical narratives, including the sad yet beautiful, centuries-old tale of Pinocchio. Vuorenmaa embraces tradition and pictorial convention, while also creating something entirely new by combining two beloved techniques, engraving and painting.
Info: Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Mannerheiminaukio 2, Helsinki, Duration: 13/10/17-18/2/18, Days & Hours: Tue & Sun 10:00-17:00, Wed-Fri 10:00-20:30, Sat 10:00-18:00, www.kiasma.fi
