Ars Fennica Awarded for the 18th Time

This year's candidates for the most prestigious art award in Finland, the 34,000-euro Ars Fennica, are the painter Markus Konttinen, the sculptor Anne Koskinen, the photographic artist Jorma Puranen and the visual artists Jaakko Niemelä and Charles Sandison. The candidates' joint exhibition will be on show in Kiasma.

The candidates for the award were selected by Berndt Arell, director of the Svenska Kulturfonden, Matti Peltokangas, sculptor, Elina Merenmies, painter, and Leena Niemistö, the Foundation’s managing director. The award winner will be chosen by the international art expert and curator David Elliott. He has been the director of Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Istanbul Modern and the Sydney Biennale.

The winner of Ars Fennica 2010 will be announced on 25 November. The winner of the audience vote will be announced on the same day.

We asked all the candidates about their plans for now, and what they intend to do after the Ars Fennica.

Markus Konttinen: My plans for after Ars Fennica revolve around the overall schedule of three areas: my creative work, my work in teaching independent artists, and my personal life with my family. In these areas of my life I often come across things and people that lead me to think in different and new ways. As regards art, I do not think it is necessary to define any themes or methods through which I will approach my next exhibition or other public appearances. I think the underlying principles of art are anchored in so many important platforms that they only become clear to the artist much later – or perhaps by accident.

Anne Koskinen: Autumn seems to be full of anniversaries. When the Henna and Pertti Niemistö Art Foundation celebrates its 20th anniversary, also my Galerie Werner Klein in Cologne, Germany, will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a special exhibition in which I’ll participate. The Association of Finnish Sculptors, celebrating its 100th anniversary, has invited me to hold a show in Galleria Sculptor in November. Although, for someone like me who lives in a rural area, one is kept busy by work and nature, one still has to find time for creative projects. You could say that an artist, working alone in the studio, is like the sole student in her own private art school. And it is a school that one apparently never graduates from, especially if one is inventive and the media and techniques change from one work to the next.

Jaakko Niemelä: In September–October I have an exhibition with my wife, Helena Hietanen, in the Jyväskylä Art Museum. It’s entitled Process – Light Works and Lighting Designs. The exhibition will present our works and competition entries for public artworks. We are also developing further our plan for an artwork for Mäntyniemi, the official residence of the President of Finland, for which we won a competition last spring. After the Ars Fennica show, I will have a solo exhibition in Galleri Andersson-Sandström in Stockholm in January 2011.

Jorma Puranen: I still have three exhibitions to finish before Ars Fennica. First there is a solo show in EMMA in Espoo, then a group exhibition in the Daegu Biennale in Korea, and finally the Carnegie Art Award exhibition in Kunsthalle Helsinki. In spring 2011 I will spend a couple of months in Paris, collecting material in Parisian museums and from collections for my new project. I will also continue the project of photographing portraits in the Sinebrychoff Art Museum, which will present an extensive solo show of them in September–December 2011.

Charles Sandison: The summer was too short and the autumn too busy for me. My primary concern now is to find time to spend with my family. My next one-man show will open in Boston in October, a week before the opening in Kiasma, so around the turn of the month I will be flying between Tampere, Boston and Helsinki. The works have all been packed already, and I just hope that the right works will end up in the right museums. In November I will create a large-scale outdoor projection in Le Mans and another in the Palais des Papes in Avignon in France. As the Culture Capital Year 2011 in Turku gets under way, a permanent work of mine will be installed in front of the main entrance to the old library in Turku. In the beginning of February I will have a solo exhibition at the Yvon Lambert Gallery in New York, and the Singapore Biennale, which opens in March, has already ommissioned a work from me, as has the Colorado Art Museum. So there are really big challenges ahead.

Merja Kukkonen

Ars Fennica 2010
8 Oct - 12 Dec, 4th floor