Images of a Flawed World
All the works in the ARS 06 exhibition have various levels, many different approaches and attempts to understand them. They are interpretations of an incomplete world.
Personally, one of the most important ARS works is Lars Nilsson’s video installation In “Orgia”. We had just started assembling ideas, which were used as tools in the planning of ARS, when we saw Nilsson’s work in an exhibition of Nordic contemporary art in Berlin. Then we knew what we were looking for. The work seemed to present in images the words we curators had used in trying to map out our thoughts on the content of the exhibition. Later, the same thing also happened with many other works.
We have not attempted to assemble an all-star cast of contemporary art, but have rather concentrated on works that have impressed and haunted us. As if on its own, the intuitive selection led to many links between the works. These are, for example, commentaries on history, tradition of painting and various religions. Of course, at the forefront are contemporary values and perspectives on the world surrounding us.
WINTER LANDSCAPES
If one wishes, one can see a Finnish take on nature and winter in the works, in particular. But from the perspective of contemporary art, even nature is not innocent but reveals values of the day and results of human activity.
Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz’s snowy landscapes captured inside snow globes, in particular, may remind you of headlines in the yellow press in which whole human destinies are condensed into three words. You could write your own sensationalist news item from their miniature tableaux: Child drowns in well, Falling tree kills woman, Naked man escapes in snow ...
Mariele Neudecker’s mist-covered mountain tops in glass tanks appear in turn to be overly romantic nature scenes. In fact, they are combinations of liquid chemicals, plastic and other synthetic materials, which are far from the pure nature and fresh mountain air. You can also follow a voyage on the Arctic in Alexander Ponomarev’s work. There the freezing environment serves to interpret emotions.
SOUND AND MUSIC
Art affects emotions and it shows – and can be heard – in many ARS works. Music is a direct channel to emotions and memories in particular. The exhibition presents works based wholly on sound, like Susan Philipz’s audio work and Juan Manuel Echavarría’s singing Columbians. Neudecker’s series of short films Winterreise in turn utilises classical music and Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen’s joint project creatively renews the tradition of choral music.
Music by the band Bloodhound Gang can also be heard blasting in the exhibition as part of the artist group El Perro’s installation. It remains to be seen which tune will stay in the mind of any given viewer.
WORKS TO SPACE
When selecting works, we constantly bore in mind that they are to be displayed particularly in Kiasma. This applies especially to works commissioned to be built for the ARS exhibition in an assigned space in Kiasma. A good example is Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger’s multipiece installation in the lobby of Kiasma. A new installation will also be constructed by Charles Sandison, Monika Sosnowska and Maaria Wirkkala. Many artists, such as Jota Castro and Sergio Vega, will also make a new version of their earlier work that has been adapted for Kiasma.
To assemble a whole from often very different works by forty different artists is quite a challenge. On the other hand, it is precisely through this difference and contrariness that the exhibition will be a more interesting experience for the audience. The exhibition also gives a good overview of how many different methods and ways of expression are used in contemporary art.
Jari-Pekka Vanhala
ARS curator
