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Mouthfuls of Contemporary Art in Lapland and Beyond
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Doig's Painting and Berlin
By Misha del Val
This is a painting by Scottish-born, Trinidad-based artist Peter Doig. My long, scruffy figure quivered as I stood in front of it at CFA gallery, the mid-winter morning I first set foot in Berlin, back in 2009. That day... (read more)
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Aine
By Misha del Val
Eila Aine was a discreet, unassuming, well-travelled mother of four who, for a day job, would look into other silent people’s wide open mouths. She read avidly, was a person awake to the current affairs... (read more)
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Staalo Turns 50
Misha del Val for Kielmukka magazine
​We arrived, as usual, a few minutes late. The room at Käki was poorly illuminated, had a mistreated piano in one corner, theatre props scattered here and there, and the unmistakable smell of self-conscious youth. (read more)
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As Above, So Below
By Misha del Val
I try to remain sensitive during our painting sessions, so that the actual handling of paint dictate the direction of the work and the emergence of the characters. In a way, I don't feel qualified... (read more)
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Untitled (Self-portrait)
By Misha del Val
It was during an evening Raisa and I felt particularly buoyant and spirited, despite the snow being stacked outside in colossal piles, far too large for that time of the year, and the world still gnashing its teeth... (read more)
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Musta Kissa ja Galleria Valo
By Misha del Val
Three worthy reasons took me to Rovaniemi last week: a train south to fetch madre from Helsinki; the wicked celebrations in Musta Kissa for the 40th year amongst us of the Pharaoh... (read more)
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Spirit of North vol. 10
By Misha del Val
I had a day off in Rovaniemi and decided to spend it in one of my favourite places in town: the Korundi House of Culture. I prowled for the second time through the ‘Spirit of North’ vol. 10 exhibition... (read more)
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The Story of the 4 Self-portraits
​By Misha del Val
I painted these self-portraits in a couple of hours, covering unfinished paintings, with the aid of a small mirror, listening to punk rock music, at the Old Potato Shed, Robertson, Australia, where I then had my studio...  (read more)
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Tiwi Mob Bus
By Misha del Val
​A bunch of Tiwi-Islanders roam through the desert plains squeezed in a mini-bus. This is ‘Tiwi Mob Bus’, a picture I painted many years ago while living at Pirlangimpi community in Melville Island, about 80 km.... (read more)

As Above So Below, As Below So Above

12/2/2022

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(...) for my part, I try to remain sensitive during our painting sessions, so that the actual handling of paint dictate the direction of the work and the emergence of the characters. In a way, I don't feel qualified to tell about the characters more than any attentive viewer. That is precisely one of the qualities we seek -through a kind of alchemic processes- in our works, that there is some reality to the characters, that they hold their own ground, and that they are free and able to create relationships with the viewer in their own terms.

The painting in question is called 'As Above So Below, As Below So Above'. The title, an old hermetic paraphrase, alludes to the correspondence between the different levels of existence. The painting doesn't fully settle into one single domain of perception or mode of being. Some of the elements feel familiar, while others, particularly on the right side of the painting, seem to have cropped up from 'beyond', from 'the other side'. Quotidian, concrete elements like the wooden table, the curious hands, the snowcapped mountain, the sunglasses are also present and serve to frame and ground the composition into a tangible reality.

Regarding your question weather the scene in the work is real or fictional, I believe our practice and its fruits profits from and thrives on the fertile ground between hard-and-fast, conventional reality and the mysterious realm of what may be possible, between bare naturalism and the world of imagination (which, unlike fantasy, may reveal a different genus of realism).

The painting belongs to the series of works we started under the exceptional circumstances of spring 2020. In this series of paintings in collaboration, an heterogeneous bunch of characters of different constitutions, backgrounds, temperaments, convictions and species, sit inexplicably around the same table. The driving force of the project has been a celebratory spirit for connection and for coming together, despite our differences.

Now, I may also share some of my own impressions on the painting. I am personally keen on the character at the centre of the composition, from behind whose head a strange botanical/floral formation seems to be blooming. I am also beguiled by the personage who appears to have breasts and wears a distinctive femenine dress, while exhibits a (fake?) beard and rests their sturdy, muscular arms on the table. There is also something in the interplay and interaction between the different kinds of white in the painting. The game is a popular table game in Spain and Latin America called parchís; I find its design an attractive pictorial element with its four arrows of different colours aiming to and coming together in a single spot. The snowy fell is characteristic of the region we live and work in Western Lapland. 

The painting was completed from April to November 2021 in our Sirkka studio.
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Doig's Painting and Berlin

22/9/2021

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This is a painting by Scottish-born, Trinidad-based artist Peter Doig. My long, scruffy figure quivered as I stood in front of it at CFA gallery, the mid-winter morning I first set foot in Berlin, back in 2009. That day, I was at the gallery with my brother of different parents, (el) Jose, who some of you might know well. Outside everything was being gobbled up by the white.

The painting hung at CFA as part of a solo show called ‘Not For Sale’, which gathered works by the artist from German museums and international private collections. Not only it was the first day my forehead was exposed to the electric air of the German capital, it was also my very first opportunity to run riot in a room packed with Doigs.

​Both of these two events, the city and the exhibition, had a seismic effect on subsequent chapters of my life, both on a personal level and as an artist. The former -with its unique capacity for regeneration from all kinds of ghosts, and its unbeatable celebratory spirit- encouraged me to attend to my inner clock, follow my bliss, and move on from my somehow stagnant life situation in Sydney.

The later -Peter Doig’s show- opened up new vistas in the noble exercise of sticking lumps of colour on a flat surface. The exhibition reset my intuition to ways of playing the drum kit (of painting) more fully, and with more intensity, without necessarily having to hit it harder.
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Peter Doig, 'Not For Sale' exhibition at CFA gallery, Berlin (Pic CFA Berlin)​
As I said, I was living then in Sydney, with little more time and heart to offer to anything or anyone other than the caresses for my two-year-old princess, and a marriage with the acids and fumes of a lustful MA in Printmaking. At the end of 2008, I went on a visit to Europe to take my daughter to her Iberian folk... (read more)
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Tiwi Mob Bus

8/6/2021

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Misha del Val, ‘Tiwi Mob Bus’, oil and natural ochres on canvas, 100 x 70 cm, 2005

​A bunch of Tiwi-Islanders roam through the desert plains squeezed in a mini-bus. This is ‘Tiwi Mob Bus’, a picture I painted many years ago while living at Pirlangimpi community in Melville Island, about 80 km. north of Darwin, Australia’s Top End.

​I ended up in Pirlangimpi following a volunteering opportunity at the local art centre Munupi Arts and Crafts. My duties at the centre included stretching canvases, grinding ochre rocks, and priming grounds for the local artists. In return, as is normal with all volunteering work, I got a lot out of the experience. 

​The locals would take me crab hunting about the mangroves; swimming in in the most stunning waterholes; they would encourage me to dab in their native tongue, so that they could have a good laugh; plus I was given free accommodation, meals and space to work on my own paintings.

Unlike most of their counterpart indigenous brothers and sisters of the desert, the Tiwis came through as outgoing, approachable, lighthearted and rather jolly. Traditionally, their way of making painting also diverged from the laters’, insofar as it never had figurative motifs, nor was set on bidimensional surfaces. Tiwi artists would customarily apply patterns of ochre colour on the skins of those taking part in festivals and ceremonies. Only in recent decades, Tiwi artwork jumped from the skin onto the canvas, chiefly -I’d argue- for commercial purposes and of dissemination.

’Tiwi Mob Bus’ brings together two painting worlds, that of Tiwi immemorial pattern-making (jilamara) cheek by jowl the long-standing linage my way of making pictures subscribes to, the figuration of Western Painting.
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Misha del Val ‘Going for Kartakuni’ ink on paper, 50 x 70 cm.
 
​’Tiwi Mob Bus’ painting is based on a photo taken during a 4000 km. road trip with a group of Tiwi artists, through the desert plains of Northern Australia, to attend the Kimberly Law and Culture (KALACC) Festival of 2005. Artists from all the three Tiwi Art Centres had been invited to participate in this event, so I was sent with them as a steward, a kind of Sancho Panza. (read more)

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Untitled (Self-portrait)

13/4/2021

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Raisa Raekallio & Misha del Val, Untitled (self-portrait), oil on linen, 115 x 135 cm. 2020
It was during an evening Raisa and I felt particularly buoyant and spirited, despite the snow being stacked outside in colossal piles, far too large for that time of the year, and the world still gnashing its teeth with the new virus, that we decided to put some props on us and take pictures of each other. We dressed up with scarves, blankets, fancy hats, pillows, and other paraphernalia we found at hand in the house. Conscious that sometimes fancy dresses may reveal more than what they hide, the next day we created quick sketches on paper of eight uncanny characters using those pictures -four of them based on pics of Raisa and four on pics of me-, that eventually crystallised in the painting above. 

A troubadour in a balaclava; a tall, soft, mushy, silky lady; a shy receding figure; a ghostly face floating about; a distracted, oblivious, rather vulgar, sort of high priest; and some others, each with its own distinctive painterly spirit, density, character and caliber, make up the odd company, who inexplicably sit together around the same table. A figure lying on the table has been concealed by an undergrowth of designy patterns (the ones you find in those chic boutiques all over Finland). The troupe seem enclosed in some kind of kelomökki, where random geometric forms tamper with a reliable, bona fide representation of the space. Behind the eight figures Raisa and I intended to paint a window to a scenery we know well, we feel close to, and is so dear to us; however, as usual our intentions proved to be in vain against the irremediable will of painting: the snowy vista through a window we aimed at, rather wished to become a painting within the painting.
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Spirit of North vol. 10

13/12/2020

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‘Spirit of North’ vol. 10
Rovaniemi Art Museum, 21.9.2019 – 26.1.2020

I had a day off in Rovaniemi and decided to spend it in one of my favourite places in town: the Korundi House of Culture. I prowled for the second time through the ‘Spirit of North’ vol. 10 exhibition, a collaboration of artists from Tohoku (Northern Japan) and Lapland.

The ‘Spirit of North’ cultural project, initiated by a group of artists from Tohoku as a means to cope with the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster that shook the region in 2011, is today an international program involving artists from Japan and various Nordic countries. The driving force of this program is to explore common ground in how spirituality is fathomed and expressed in Tohoku and other northern regions in the globe. The 10th volume of ‘Spirit of North’ spreads over three rooms at Korundi House and includes paintings, video art, performances, sculptures, installations and drawings.

​Artists/curators Yosiko Maruyama and Helena Junttila have put their hands, brains and hearts together to bring about a compelling show marked by an eerie hum. A sincere quest to explore and honour the domain of the spirit can be sensed throughout the works in the exhibition. One finds it a bit more tricky, though, to spot the ‘Northern’ aspect of the exhibition’s title in terms of content or form within the artworks, and it just seems to denote the origin of the artists in the exhibition.
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Hiroaki Nakatsugawa, Light Shining Fleet, acrylic on canvas, 2013
​Korundi offered a program of art performances in parallel to the ‘Spirit of North’ exhibition. Last month at the opening night, when I visited the exhibition the first time, Titta Court and Auri Ahola premiered ‘Tykky’, their latest piece in collaboration. The artists dressed in what it looked like a patchwork of sleeping bag fabrics that obliterated the shape of their bodies and fuelled associations between the forms of humans and trees. Something magical took place during the performance: the piece’s slow pace, generous spaciousness, immersive music and unexpected forms brought to life the paintings by Japanese artist Hiroaki Nakatsugawa, also present in the same room, which, in turn, provided an unparalleled atmosphere for the performance piece.

​During my second visit to the show, now alone in the room, I took the time to digest more fully Nakatsugawa’s work. His almost monotone, gestural paintings are highly evocative, nevertheless, as great paintings usually do... (read more)
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Aine

28/10/2020

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Eila Aine was a discreet, unassuming, well-travelled mother of four who, for a day job, would look into other silent people’s wide open mouths. She read avidly, was a person awake to the current affairs of her own time and place, and bore a caring voice for other fellow women of her generation, whose song was, due to the ebb and flow of the times, not being properly heard. Further, Eila and her husband Veli Aine, a successful businessman in the area of motoring, shared a common passion for the visual arts; they collected extensively and enjoyed their acquisitions at their Tornio house. This mutual interest for art became a seed. Over time, when their house got packed to the rafters with artworks, this seed reaped its fruit. Since, we have the Aine Art Museum in Tornio.
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Aine Art Museum Director ​Katriina Pietilä-Juntura introducing Aine exhibition
Aine Art Museum has opened its doors for ‘Eila’, an exhibition celebrating 100 years of Eila Aine’s birth, with a thoughtful selection of artworks from the museum’s collections. At the opening, as the occasion called for, there were speeches. Eila’s granddaughter, Outi Aine, shared first-hand, insightful accounts about her grandmother’s multifaceted personality, her example as a woman dedicated to both, her family and her profession, her personal interests and her gifts. Museum director Katriina Pietilä-Juntura introduced the outlines of the exhibition, shed light on the themes behind each of the four rooms comprising the show and, pausing every now and then to talk aboutparticular works, directed the audience's attention in the room like a well-versed orquestra conductor.​

The first room, where the speeches were held, was themed ‘Kevyesti keskellä päivää‘ (Lightly in the Middle of the Day) honouring the homonymous radio program, Eila would surely have listened to in the midst of the bustle of her family life and dentist practice... (read more)
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Musta Kissa & Galleria Valo

6/8/2020

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Above: The Pharao and His court at Musta Kissa
Below: the luminous realm of Galleria Valo
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The Story of the 4 Self-portraits

6/5/2020

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Misha del val, Untitled, oil on canvas, 35 x 35 each, 2013
I painted these self-portraits in a couple of hours, covering unfinished paintings, with the aid of a small mirror, listening to punk rock music, at the Old Potato Shed, Robertson, Australia, where I then had my studio, on an autumny Sunday evening, after having spent the day with my daughter, diving in waterholes and watching Studio Ghibli movies. 

In Robbo, I was subletting my studio-space from big-shot Australian artist B. Q. The morning after I had painted the self-portraits, B. Q. dropped by the studio. He just wanted to see everything was going. We chatted while he looked distractedly around the space. Then his eyes paused on the four small portraits. After an instant of silence, he complemented the works and went on to suggest why not enter them into a prestigious portrait art prize taking place in the city soon (of which he happened to be part of the jury). I smiled, pretending to be flattered, secretly vexed at the equivocalness of the remark. On one of the walls hung a large canvas of an elegantly dressed lady, who had been involved in the Sydney art scene for half a century and was also good friends with B. Q. I had agreed to paint her picture for that year’s edition of the portrait competition. The painting, for which I had worked for weeks, was obviously my entry-to-be. In the shower, I gave it a second though, but ultimately dodged the temptation of following B. Q.’s suggestion, kept to my word to the sitter and entered Lady Elsa’s portrait to the Archibald Art Prize. The painting never made it through to the prize’s selection process finalists.

The self-portraits were part of an exhibition I held in a Sydney gallery some weeks later. I was relying on the sales from this show to pay off my modest debts (mostly related to framing), pack my gear, get myself a one-way ticket and relocate in Berlin, after 11 years living in Australia. After the exhibition's opening night however, only a couple of small works on paper had been sold. The lack of sales jeopardised my travelling plans and for a couple of days my mood sunk. I felt dejected before the prospect of having to stay longer, indeterminately, in the Continent Island.

On the third day however, I got a redeeming call from the Sydney gallery owner. He told me on the phone the four self-portraits had been sold that very morning. He said a man had stopped a taxi in front of the gallery entry, greeted him politely at the front desk, inquired about the self-portraits, which he had apparently seen in an invitation; then he went upstairs, carefully looked at the paintings, came back downstairs and bought the four of them in one go, before leaving the gallery in the same taxi. The self-portraits became thus my ticket to Berlin and the reason why I live in Europe nowadays.

That summer in Berlin I met Raisa Raekallio again after 13 years, but that is a bite for a different story... Not long after I had settled in my apartment in Friedrichshain, I received a short Linkedin message from the person who had purchased the self portraits (let’s call him T). He was keen to meet the man behind the face on the pictures. A couple of cordial emails followed, along with the promise to meet up in person next time I would visit Australia. T and I met six months later in his art-work crowded, worldly-wise looking, Edgecliff, Sydney office. We soon became friendly. T commissioned me to paint his portrait and that of his wife. He bought a couple of other self-portraits I had made in Berlin that year. T’s interest in my art turned out to be of instrumental help for my subsequent travels between the Old Continent and Australia to be with my daughter.

Then in 2016, while I was on a visit in Australia, T and I sat for lunch in a poorly lit restaurant in the Southern Highlands of NSW. The atmosphere was charged with the promise of rain, and the gaps in between courses elongated. Our conversation that day wandered from unborn books to chapters of T’s annual visits to Venice, and from gardening tips to life reorienting events. I enjoyed listening to T’s vehement remarks. After coffee, T handed me a large-sized bag with the four self-portraits in it. ‘Please don't take offence’ said the man ‘we have recently moved into a smaller cottage in the countryside and we don’t have anymore as much room as I’d like to for artworks’. He added the self-portraits had cheered (and challenged) him while they hung on his Sydney office. T kept the other paintings he had bought from me but he wanted me to have those portraits back, for which he had paid not even three years before over $5,000.

In time, I hopped from Berlin to Finland and got the works shipped back home. My first gig with the Artists’ Association of Lapland a couple of years ago was a curated group exhibition at Kellokas gallery and the four self-portraits featured in it. The critic who covered the exhibition wrote: ‘Misha del Val created […] three messianic face pictures. Man takes himself to be God. But fangs cannot easily be easily concealed’. Lord knows.

The story doesn't end there. Earlier this year, in the middle of the corona crisis, someone who had seen the self-portraits on the net contacted me and, after some give-and-take, bought two of them. The four siblings separated for the first time: a couple were sold for the second time and shipped to Germany, where they found a new home in a private collection; the other two reminded with me in Finland. 

Presently the works rest on the walls of Napa gallery in Rovaniemi. Sitting in the comfort of my living-room, I now take a look on the screen of my computer at the person flashing on these four square-shaped, life-size portraits  and, full of perplexity, wonder who that fellow is.
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    Misha del Val is a Lapland-Based visual artist, writer, independent curator and meditation enthusiast.

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