Art Around the Clock

Lately I have been running in to a lot of classical, practically Greek or Roman, sculpture and paintings. These are not original artefacts from centuries past and they are not artworks by Neoclassicist or Renaissance artists, these artworks are created by contemporary arts practitioners. 

Li Hongbo “Goddess of the Parthenon”, paper, 45 x 22 x 25 cm, 2013 (Courtesy Klein Sun Gallery, New York. © Li Hongbo)

Probably the most well known artist working in this way currently is Li Hongbo. It is almost impossible not to have run into his expanding paper art objects. Magical objects that contain the happy and joyous extravagance of the origins of the technique best known from chinese paper-lantern decorations where Hongbo's original inspiration is said to have come from. Currently you can see Hongbo's work at the KleinSun Gallery in New York in his exhibition: Tools of Study, which runs until March 2^nd 2014. The sculptures themselves seem very pleasing in the way that having a cool new app on your iPhone is pleasing. 

Klein Sun Gallery

525 West 22nd Street New York

NY 10011

U.S.A.

Phone: (212) 255-4388

Monday through Saturday 10AM – 6PM

Li Hongbo / Tools of Study at Klein Sun Gallery from Colossal on Vimeo.

Another artist that caught my eye this week was Viggo Wallensköld who is currently having a  retrospective exhibition Variations (Variaatioita) at the Hämeenlinna Art Museum 22.2.–4.5.2014. Wallensköld paints figures who are often different, deformed, mutilated or part machine. There is a quality of unabashed loneliness and fragility to his work that is reminiscent of the Romantic Poets of the mid 18^th century. 

Hämeenlinna Art Museum

Viipurintie 213200 Hämeenlinna, Finland
p. (03) 621 3017

Tue-Thu 11-18
Fri-Sun 11-17
Mondays closed

Helsingin Sanomat 22.2.2014

I also went to see a couple of exhibitions this week around and about Helsinki. There is some interesting miniature floating worlds for view currently at Gallery Sculptor by Jouna Karsi: 12.2.-2.3.2014. The sculptures are glances from contemporary culture, with scenes that resemble title sequences of movies. 

Vuoristorata, Jouna Karsi

I also saw the Roberto Pugliese exhibition at MUU Gallery The Space Of A Year. This exhibition consisted of a single installation utilising two video screens and an elevated floor, which viewers could use to create their chosen soundtrack. The exhibition was a lot of fun though visually it felt a bit anticlimactic. Still well worth a visit. The exhibition runs until March 2^nd 2014.

The Space of a Year, Roberto Pugliese

I also went to Gallery G on a whim and I must say that I was surprised by the works of Kimi Pakarinen. In the past I have not been a fan of his paintings, but in this exhibition called Exploring My Realites, and despite the trite title of the exhibition, the paintings are riveting. They are made with colours that should not work and scribble like a teenagers first tagging of a wall and still they come together harmoniously. They remind me of a midlifecrises, there is anger, experience and some questionable decisions.

Kimi Pakarinen: L'Énigme d'un après-midi, 2013, öljy kankaalle, 160 x 200 cm

Imagine

Lets pretend, just for one moment, that this is not just a drawing of a square.

Let us pretend that this square is in fact a box and that this box is in fact the world. 

Not just any old world, but the world of thoughts and ideas.

Imagine that this box contains everything you have ever thought of in your lifetime. Everything you have dreamt in passing, on a long train journey from east to west from north to south. Each moment of weakness and enduring pain. The joys and playful undercurrents of conversations you have had.

IMAGINE

That everything in your mind could fit into this box.

Now imagine that this is not a box, but only a drawing of a square.

Exhibition evaluation: curating _ Waiting For The Summer

LONGING FOR THE SUMMER - A Journey into Naivism
2.11.2013 - 2.2.2014
Curated from the Suomen Gallup Foundation collection by Tapani Pennanen
Tampere Art Museum, Puutarhakatu 34, 33101 Tampere

The Longing For The Summer exhibition at Tampere Art Museum is a curated selection, of naivist paintings spanning over two floors of the museum. Foreign artists are presented in the ground floor gallery and Finnish artists on the upper level gallery. Paintings hang low on the walls emphasising a child's perspective, and the exhibition utilizes coloured and textured walls to accentuate exhibits. Highlighted and enlarged titles of selected artworks are placed randomly within the gallery spaces, they create an intriguing environment that inspires closer viewer examination of artworks.
Interestingly, the curator has used varied elements to accessorise, as well as, conceptualise a link to summer: fake grass, colourful rugs, wooden crates and paper lanterns. While ascending to the second level these elements work to an advantage, the viewer feels the softness of grass beneath their feet and sees text playfully framed by paper lanterns, evoking the feel of a summer garden party. Unfortunately these elements become confusing when combined with the exhibited works. It is questionable if these elements enhance the visitor's experience or only focus attention away from the actual exhibition.

Sunday searches

I've been looking at a lot of net art recently and one of the websites I am thoroughly enjoying is http://art.teleportacia.org run by olia lialina, Russian journalist, film critic and one of the pioneering net.art artists. The thing I love about this website is that along with lots of links to artworks and informative written texts, visiting the page is essentially like looking at the night sky. There is a connection between the Web and nature that I can't quite process but find alluring. She also reminds us that there is a distinct difference between the Internet and the Web.
Her artwork  Online Newspapers, édition française are hypnotising and the Le Monde work, makes me think of stories told around campfires.

Online Newspapers, édition française, Le Monde, Olia LIALINA, février 2013

Sentimentality and Politics

I dreamt of a house last night. In fact I dreamt of buying a house within a house where the floor boards were rotten, because the gigantic room had been used as a pool. As I was climbing up a ladder out from the pool to the second level I suddenly remembered that I already owned a house.

I have been known to be a somewhat sentimental soul. I often find myself living in past memories or dreams of the future. I don't even really like reading the daily newspaper, as it blurs with my visions of life, with its unforgiving present tense. I am not ethereal, but enjoy the enthralment of narratives that have been set down to be born again and again. Perhaps, this is the reason I dislike overtly political art that is intent on making its viewer feel slightly nauseated by the present. No, I enjoy the poetry of personal experiences, the rough untamed edges of humanity. All the needed politics will flow from their daily experience in to the art without resorting to the slapstick of a political statement. This doesn't mean that I am partial to overly romanticised paintings with their watery vistas and undulating undercurrents of love unfulfilled. I am, no matter how sentimental, a realist. 

I am excited by ideas, all ideas no matter how “bad” or “good”. Thoughts turn me on, in a way I never could be by the statement of facts or so called current affairs. The random ramblings of the “crazy old man” in the bookshop will usually interest me more than how many people died unnecessarily this week in a war for drugs or oil. I do not in any way wish to present the notion that I don't care about such events. They are just not in my immediate vista most of the time and do not appeal to my sentimentality, or perhaps they do, but so much so, that were I to spend my days pondering famine, war, violence and cruelty I would probably jump off a bridge by next week.

HEHE, 2009, Installation: Aluminium plinth, aquarium, pumps, tubes, tank, electronics, model of a nuclear power station, water and fluoresceine dye, Unique

I am however interested in our environment and its destruction by mankind. This I suppose is political but I think it is also a narrative of humanity. We often destroy that what we love and need most and for me nature is the closest thing to a religion I know. Today I am excited by the artistic duo HEHE (Helen Evans, 1972 and Heiko Hansen, 1970) and their current exhibition Anthroposphere at the Aeroplastics Contemporary in Brussels. Their installations look at the “conflictual rapport between a humanity that is caught up in an unbridled quest for new sources of energy (along with new ways of wasting it)”

HeHe, Prise en charge
2011, socket, smoke

The exhibition is on until March 15th 2014 and should not be missed if you are fortunate enough to be in Brussels. For those of us further afield we can let our imaginations surrender to their work online at http://hehe.aeroplastics.net and look forward to the day a HEHE exhibitions comes our way.

HeHe : Anthroposphere
16.01 – 15.03.14

AEROPLASTICS contemporary
32 rue Blanche
1060
Brussels
Belgium
Europe

Chilled Bossa Nova is playing in the other room, my neighbour is doing a jaunty rendition of the McGyver theme song on his piano and I am searching through LibriVox for some entertaining audio books.

Another sleepy Sunday in our apartment is starting to make me feel restless. Hearty breakfast, many cups of coffee and long showers that cover most of the Andrew Lloyd Webber classics from technicolor dreamcoats to the memoirs of an old kitty, Grizabella. 

 This leads me to wonder why Sarah Brightman has joined the Challenger Centre Advisory Council. How will she inspire space exploration? Well, she is essentially becoming the eighth civilian space tourist according to the Telegraph. For now we have the fact that “In 2012, Sarah announced her intention to launch on a future orbital spaceflight mission to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of a 3-person crew on board a Soyuz rocket.” (1)  Not sure if the whole space thing is a publicity stunt or just a very expensive holiday for the soprano, but it is nice to see she has interests.

For more fun in space I would recommend visiting and downloading NASA's Eyes a 3d environment that contains a whole bunch of real NASA mission data and that lets you explore our solar system. Pretty cool stuff, if you ask me. http://eyes.nasa.gov

Is anyone else reminded of net art when they see the, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat: Any Dream Will Do, video? For some reason it makes my mind jump to the work of net art artist PetraCortright. 

TOUCH

Today I saw one of the most exciting gallery exhibitions I have witnessed in quite some time. Within Reach at Gallery Sculptor is a combination of three interactive installations by Heidi Tikka that incorporate human contact and technology. To really experience the work, you cannot be frightened to interact. The performative nature of the artworks demand viewer participation, which bring up interesting issues about art and people. Most viewers are generally frightened to interact with art, to ask for directions, frightened that they will break a work or that they will interact “incorrectly” with a work. Touch, especially in culture like the one we have here in Finland, is uncomfortable.

At Hand , 2010-2013 by Heidi Tikka

The first installation At Hand , 2010-2013, is a series of window projections that interact in a minimalist way with the viewer. They are projected onto the windows and are also visible to the viewers that happen to be walking by the gallery. This work defines the gallery space, how we move, think, view and play within the space.

The second work is a machine called GSR2 (Galvanic Skin Reaction), 2013. The viewer is given a set of instructions that they must follow by placing their hand on to two copper plates that measure the viewers skin electricity. The GSR2 uses the same technology as lie detectors. The artwork projects a moving image of a hand, depending on the machines reading of the viewer, onto the viewers hand. The projections vary depending on the viewers GSR, sometimes stroking sometimes rubbing. For me this artwork was the most uncomfortable of the pieces. From now on, each time I will touch a touch screen, I will think of the projected hand from this artwork that rubbed small circles at the base of my thumb.

Three Nameless Prototypes, 2013 by Heidi Tikka

The artwork which is probably the easiest to enjoy, once you get over the whole touching in public thing, is called Three Nameless Prototypes, 2013 (Kolme nimetöntä prototyyppiä). It is constructed from three female mannequin torsos in knitted dresses. They hang in a dimly lit space, separate, occupied by these lonely (slightly deformed) figures – All very similar but distinctly different. Viewers are asked to touch each piece, to rub and really feel them up. At first this seems a bit scary. Touching a mannequin in front of others, what does this say about me? Should I put my hand in the hole built near the mannequins groin? Is it ok to touch a mannequins chest? It all feels a bit scary until you give in to it and just let the yourself act like a human. To hug each mannequin, to hear their breath, heartbeat or simply feel the vibration your body's touch has started in the artwork. Suddenly it all feels quite safe and calming.

The artworks in the Within Reach exhibition are an interesting mix of human touch and technology, they ask difficult questions about technology, consumerism, loneliness and most of all touch. This fantastic exhibition is only on for one last day tomorrow the 19^th of January 2014 so if you have a chance go, see and touch.

HEIDI TIKKA
Kosketusetäisyys – Within reach
2.-19.1.2014

Gallery Sculptor

Eteläranta 12, 00130 Helsinki

http://www.sculptors.fi