Wax de Dior on Kiasma’s Floor

How does Maaria Wirkkala’s floor move? What does a conservator do with a pint glass fixed to a broomstick? Petri Ryöppy, technical project manager, and Siukku Nurminen, conservator, give you a behind-the-scenes look at the ARS exhibition, how it was built and how it is maintained.

Exhibition managers and other technical staff are responsible for the transport and handling of the exhibition works, as well as their storage and safety. They build and hang the exhibition in co-operation with the conservators and the exhibiting artists. Technical staff also looks after the exhibition rooms. "A major exhibition such as this requires constant maintenance. The rooms and works need to be maintained and serviced from time to time," says project manager Petri Ryöppy.

From the perspective of technical staff, ARS 06 differs from other exhibitions by its sheer volume. "When the entire building is refitted at the same time, and only for one exhibition, there is a lot of everything. More than 40 artists participate in the exhibition and there are approximately 100 works. Hanging and installing all the works was a big job, although we had almost double the normal number of builders. Careful planning, in particular, becomes emphasised in large projects because the exhibitions are built in stages," says Ryöppy.

A moving floor

When putting together exhibitions, most of the works are usually borrowed from other collections or the artists. Art is also produced in the museum. An artist designs and realises the work of art together with the museum’s technical staff. "Those are the projects you remember best afterwards. You are part of it from beginning to end. Following the creative process and its realisation is to my mind the most interesting part of this job," says Ryöppy.

Artwork produced exclusively for the ARS 06 exhibition includes Swan Lake by Swiss artists Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger and Solitude in Stability by Maaria Wirkkala. The production process can be quite long. Steiner and Lenzlinger visited Finland last summer to collect material for their work and then came back to Finland to build their work in Kiasma in December and January. Designing and planning Wirkkala’s work began in Kiasma as early as spring 2005. Ryöppy stresses that understanding the artist’s idea first is important before you can even begin to plan and design the technical implementation. There are usually several ways of realising the work, so the idea behind the work has to be refined. Ryöppy says this process sometimes takes a great deal of time even if production deadlines were already looming.

"The idea of Wirkkala’s work is to place the viewer on emptiness, both physically and figuratively. She wanted to build a floor that would reveal the uncertainty of being. We had long discussions on exactly what kind of movement she wanted the floor to have. She said the floor should react sensitively and unstably even to the movements of a single person. A large, heavy stone on the floor posed a special challenge," Ryöppy says, describing the birth process of Wirkkala’s work.

Ryöppy goes on to tell that the technical design for the exhibition works is also influenced by whether they are intended to be displayed later at a different time or place. It is then important to keep in mind at the planning stage that dismantling the work cannot be done by breaking the work. Some of the works, such as Swan Lake by Steiner and Lenzlinger, are unique and will never be built again. "That’s part of contemporary art. An artwork ceases to exist when it is dismantled. It is easy to become attached to a work of art during the long production process, and when you take the work down, you sometimes feel sad knowing that you’ll never see that work again."

Wax de Dior

People often associate art conservation with restoring old works of art. Kiasma conservator Siukku Nurminen tells us more about her job from the perspective of contemporary art. One of the most important tasks is the careful documentation of the works on loan between different museums and collections. "We document in detail the condition of the work both when it arrives and when it leaves. Conservators also participate in building the exhibitions, and if necessary, we repair works that have suffered in transport. In addition to that, we look after the works during the exhibition together with exhibition managers and guards," Nurminen says of her job description as a conservator.

Nurminen tells us that the most laborious works of the ARS 06 exhibition were Untitled #1111 (Little Ed's Daughter Margaret) and Untitled # 1163 (Homeland) by Petah Coyne. The massive steel-framed sculptures arrived in huge transport cases and assembling and finishing the works, which came in pieces, took Kiasma’s staff a couple of days. "We received a 40-page manual just for assembling the sculptures and there are just as many instructions for taking it apart again. Then again, it took the artist a couple of years to create the sculptures."

Little accidents always happen when building an exhibition. Coyne’s works are mainly made of flowers dipped in wax and attached to a steel frame. When the conservators were finishing the works for the ARS 06 exhibition, more wax-dipped flowers were attached to the works. "We were patching up the signs of transportation in other ways as well. We had special wax developed by Christian Dior in a water bath in a bucket on the floor. We first dipped the flowers in the wax one by one, and then had to rush to fix them in the right place on the work before the wax solidified. In all that rush, I managed to trip over the wax bucket, which fell over in the middle of the floor. Fortunately, the work of art was not damaged. Now exhibition visitors can see a stain left by the wax on the floor, a reminder of building the ARS 06 exhibition."

Imaginative tools

Being so diverse, contemporary art poses changing challenges to conservators. The upkeep and maintenance of the works sometimes require imaginative solutions and tools. Nurminen shows us the tools she developed for Steiner and Lenzlinger’s Swan Lake. The installation’s pond consists of motor oil and liquid urea, which fertilises the pink growth around the pond. Fertiliser must be added regularly and the pond also needs maintenance. "We use this to carefully pour urea in the middle of the pond," says Nurminen and shows a self-made tool, a long broomstick with a plastic pint glass attached to one end. A whisk attached to a broomstick is used for mixing the pond’s ingredients and smoothing the oil surface.

"A conservator’s number one tool in the exhibition rooms is a broom and a dustpan," says Nurminen and illustrates her words by Montri Toemsombat’s work Inhale / Exhale. The sand forming the chessboard in Toemsombat’s installation is apt to spread onto the room’s floor. "We also use many different brushes. For instance, Berlinde de Bruyckere’s Mute Horse needs to be brushed daily to retain the shine of its coat."

Vappu Penttilä
Trainee of Communications