Skateboarding in summer, art in winter

”In the summer I skate and take photos and produce all kind of material to work on in the winter. Skateboarding is not that easy in Finland in the winter, with snow and cold weather…”

To Tuukka Kaila (born 1975), skateboarding is a lifestyle and for several years, he has edited a skateboarding magazine called Numero. It was for his magazine that Kaila first began to create various still lifes combining Russian and Soviet paraphernalia with American skateboarding brand stuff. Soon the images and the ideas behind them began to approach genre paintings.

Kaila says his images are about things he knows best. They are neither declarations nor art discourse; Kaila leaves those for essays and books, which he likes to read. Works to be displayed at Kiasma include images on skaters, landscapes and objects.

”I’ve been interested in Soviet Russian things for a long time, and how to combine that with all-American skateboarding, the very brand-aware world of young people; it’s not that much about a conflict, it’s about merging and bringing things together.

Now my works will be on display in a museum; before, I’ve shown stuff like this in Numero. I don’t think the readers of the skateboarding magazine are that interested in the contents of my images, they want to know about the incidents, things and products related to skateboarding that the images present. It remains to be seen how museum audiences will respond to my images”, says Tuukka Kaila and continues: ”In general, I don’t pay that much attention to getting famous or things like that. I just do what I want. Skateboarding is my life, and photography is a way to present that life.”

Päivi Oja