Kimmo Schroderus and the art of cars

Kimmo Schroderus is not only one of the foremost Finnish sculptors, but also a passionate car aficionado. Sometimes these two aspects meet. The Kiasma Horror vacui exhibition includes a sculpture capturing the path of a rearwheel drive car burning rubber.

What do cars mean to you?

A car is a creature with a personality, combining transport and the pleasure of being on the move. A car is a travel companion. The trip can be good or bad, but we are in it together. We are both left on the road or we both reach the destination happily together.

What can you tell us about your cars?

We have three cars in active use: Lydia, Reino and Piiska. Lydia is the youngest member of the gang, an Audi S4 Avant 17 years old. Lydia works the hardest, in summer and in winter. Reino is an original Audi Quattro, 25 years of age. Piiska is an Opel Kadett Coupe, 34 years old. Piiska is my wife’s car, and I’m not allowed to drive it very often, as I’ve been told that I “consume too much petrol” and “will surely wreck Piiska”. Reino and Piiska spend the winter in a warm warehouse. Until summer comes around, we just look at their pictures on the wall.

Have you modified your cars?

The right feeling is essential for driving, and feeling can be best improved by modifying the sounds that the car makes and the things that you see or touch most frequently, such as the steering wheel, the gear stick and the meters. Tyres and alloy wheels are the fastest way to change the appearance and riding qualities of the car. The walls of our home are filled with different coloured wheels.

Actual modifications include the wide rear arcs for Lydia and changes in Reino’s turbocharger pipes and intercooler. Both have been fitted with new brakes, several times. Lydia’s chassis was first converted from standard to low, and then from low to high. Lydia is more about fun and experimenting. With Reino, emphasis is on speed and good riding qualities. The purely technical aspects of conversion and servicing are often done in cooperation with my brother. Lately, I have welded him a ramp and he returned the favour by offering expert help when Lydia needed a new timing belt.

Piiska has the most original configuration of the three, and we hope to get it registered as a museum vehicle at some point. I have many plans for the cars, but sculpting is such slow work that it often takes up all my time.

In which ways your cars are involved in your art?

Sculpting and cars can happily coexist and relate to each other in many ways. The subjects of sculptures vary endlessly. On the other hand, spending time with cars involves everything from driving to moulding a gear knob. I believe that contradictory impulses are a major ingredient of art. I want the audience to create many different associations when looking at my work. My car sculpture is not only targeted at audiences interested in cars, but at audiences interested in art.

Cars are a major part of your works 90° and If Not Today, Then Tomorrow. Tell us about it.

The car is a very important part of modern life, you know. I want to create art on themes that I have a real personal relationship to. I’m not happy with a superficial relation to the subject matters of my work. At best, cars can be very sculptural, and sculpturelike in size, for example. If Not Today, Then Tomorrow was in my head for eight years before evolving into a viable idea. Those days, my relationship with cars was not as concrete as it is now.

My latest work with a car theme, 90°, and related ideas had been with me for about five years. I had various alternatives in my mind, but this particular depiction of movement, with this particular car, felt right for the time and the purpose. The sculpture describes the path of a car rotating around its nose in a slide. Up to the miniature stage I considered a handbrake turn as an alternative, but that proved a surprisingly complex movement. Too complex in the sense that a visitor to the exhibition might have found it rather difficult to understand what the movement is all about.

Which qualities do you value in a car?

People and cars must always have character. An average car is a compromise for the masses, and lacks character. Character may involve power, looks, sound, smell or special historical or individual features. I don’t value luxury equipment or an increased amount of computer technology. The car doesn’t have to be easy to handle by anybody and everybody. Anybody and everybody are not allowed to drive a truly
important car, anyway.

If money wasn’t an obstacle, which car would you buy?

I don’t even want to enter into any “if money was no obstacle” games. I’m interested in cars that are possibilities even for me, if I just want them enough. Ultimately, it is all about choices and what you spend your money on. Why would it be more logical to spend 20,000 euros on an impersonal new car than on a moody old sports car?

If I absolutely have to make such choices, I would choose different cars for different purposes. Not too many, as I like to retain a personal relationship to each car, to make them all my friends and not just a part of a collection.

If I had to make the decision in one minute, I would choose these: for careful use and ultimate macho action, De Tomaso Pantera; for a more sophisticated companion to the Pantera, a Datsun 240 Z. For a working car, a Jeep Wrangler, which would double as a convertible in the summer. For my wife, I would choose a Fiat 500 or 600; I’m not quite sure which is her favourite. Maybe even the retro model with a design that beats many other new cars. And perhaps the Opel Manta B to practice racing with my brother. I might also buy him either an Audi Sport Quattro or the rally version, S1. The S1 may be the one model on the list that I can’t afford even if I sold every single thing I own and lived in a tree.

If I had to choose just one car, it would be the Pantera. Right after the Kiasma opening, my wife and I will go to Italy to participate in the 50th anniversary of the De Tomaso factories. There we will get to see dozens of Panteras. You can’t really see them in Finland. Or hear them, or smell them.

If you were a car, which car would you be?

A car is never a fully independent creature, and it can’t look after itself. Someone else must always take care of a car. Therefore, I don’t think I’d like to be a car. On the other hand, a car that’s well maintained will take good care of its driver – it is a sort of symbiosis.

Arja Miller, Chief Curator
The writer is a co-curator of the exhibition Horror vacui.

Kimmo Schroderus, Markus Copper and Jari Haanperä in Horror vacui exhibition in Kiasma.