Valo
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 of Broken Songs; and the vernissage of North Wind II exhibition at Galleria Valo.
Madre landed well, in good spirits, with her usual sack of blessings in disguise, keen to celebrate with us a proper white Christmas with family brawls, absent-minded raindeers and a pervasive scent of cinnamon. She arrived, from moment one, resolved to wish everyone left, right and centre Feliz Navidad and order her café con leche in unblemished Castilian.
Before jumping on the tracks to Helsinki, I spent a long kaamos night in Rovaniemi. Cats from all corners of town (and beyond) descended to the abyss of Musta Kissa, attending the Pharaoh’s call. I got there early and, from the bench I sat on with my accomplice Päivi Kallio, could distinguish types from all walks of life approaching the barroom, clocked by the darkness of the mid-winter, polar night. Prophets of the preposterous, professional haters, disheveled artists, gaudily-painted jongleurs, broad bearded men prone to weep, deaf tigresses, apostles bearing incandescent longings, green people, yellow people, rainbow people, even a couple of fallen angels off-duty, and random bunch of local Mephistophelian musicians including Jaakko Laitinen, Matti Kanabro and Tuomas Autti paraded through the batwing saloon doors of the hangout.
They brought their gifts of golden camaraderie, the incense of a good laugh and myrrh, for the hangover. Everybody drank and talked, talked and drank, in that particular way -not always obvious to the unlearned- in which Finns seem to have lots of fun. In moving tunes -some born out of the Pharaoh’s hand Himself- we celebrated the life and glory of His Ivalonian Grace, for the hell of it.
Madre landed well, in good spirits, with her usual sack of blessings in disguise, keen to celebrate with us a proper white Christmas with family brawls, absent-minded raindeers and a pervasive scent of cinnamon. She arrived, from moment one, resolved to wish everyone left, right and centre Feliz Navidad and order her café con leche in unblemished Castilian.
Before jumping on the tracks to Helsinki, I spent a long kaamos night in Rovaniemi. Cats from all corners of town (and beyond) descended to the abyss of Musta Kissa, attending the Pharaoh’s call. I got there early and, from the bench I sat on with my accomplice Päivi Kallio, could distinguish types from all walks of life approaching the barroom, clocked by the darkness of the mid-winter, polar night. Prophets of the preposterous, professional haters, disheveled artists, gaudily-painted jongleurs, broad bearded men prone to weep, deaf tigresses, apostles bearing incandescent longings, green people, yellow people, rainbow people, even a couple of fallen angels off-duty, and random bunch of local Mephistophelian musicians including Jaakko Laitinen, Matti Kanabro and Tuomas Autti paraded through the batwing saloon doors of the hangout.
They brought their gifts of golden camaraderie, the incense of a good laugh and myrrh, for the hangover. Everybody drank and talked, talked and drank, in that particular way -not always obvious to the unlearned- in which Finns seem to have lots of fun. In moving tunes -some born out of the Pharaoh’s hand Himself- we celebrated the life and glory of His Ivalonian Grace, for the hell of it.
Above: The Pharao and His court in Musta Kissa
Below: the luminous realm of Galleria Valo from outside
Below: the luminous realm of Galleria Valo from outside
At about nine, I left the purgatory of Musta Kissa, and I immersed myself into the thick blackness of the Rovaniemi evening.
From the dark patio outside, Galleria Valo looked like some luminous heavenly realm. Through the gallery’s ample glass windows, I could distinguish divine cheese puffs and beatific salty sticks on the table, and on the walls enigmatic objects, latent with promises of celestial art experiences, in exchange for the charity of your attention and engagement.
I pushed the empyrean doors of the Arktikum building and I made my way in. I let go of anything dispensable in me at the hooks of the cloackroom: gloves, thick winter jacket, my fluffy hat, the shreds of my former pride, and a good chunk of my worldly concerns.
As soon as I got into the gallery space I felt a hail from the other end of the gallery. I directed my steps, oblivious of the chit-chatting crowd, towards Johanna Saarenpää’s painting of what I thought it wanted to be a landscape. With half smile, I rested my eyes on the brushstrokes, glazes, and drips of the worked surface. The work had charm, indeed. The main appeal of the painting resided in that it was bounded to never entirely fulfil any quest for meaning. 'Vettä' was well and alive, resting in a limbo, where it resisted all labelling. The work became thus a concealment, rather than a revelation, and held that rare quality of saying sonorously and unmistakably what it was not. Like a man with a mission who's lost its way. Like the bountiful silence of the wise.
From the dark patio outside, Galleria Valo looked like some luminous heavenly realm. Through the gallery’s ample glass windows, I could distinguish divine cheese puffs and beatific salty sticks on the table, and on the walls enigmatic objects, latent with promises of celestial art experiences, in exchange for the charity of your attention and engagement.
I pushed the empyrean doors of the Arktikum building and I made my way in. I let go of anything dispensable in me at the hooks of the cloackroom: gloves, thick winter jacket, my fluffy hat, the shreds of my former pride, and a good chunk of my worldly concerns.
As soon as I got into the gallery space I felt a hail from the other end of the gallery. I directed my steps, oblivious of the chit-chatting crowd, towards Johanna Saarenpää’s painting of what I thought it wanted to be a landscape. With half smile, I rested my eyes on the brushstrokes, glazes, and drips of the worked surface. The work had charm, indeed. The main appeal of the painting resided in that it was bounded to never entirely fulfil any quest for meaning. 'Vettä' was well and alive, resting in a limbo, where it resisted all labelling. The work became thus a concealment, rather than a revelation, and held that rare quality of saying sonorously and unmistakably what it was not. Like a man with a mission who's lost its way. Like the bountiful silence of the wise.
Johanna Saarenpää, 'Vettä', acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm. 2017
In the middle of the room, floating in abundant wall space, hung Tuomas Korkalo’s bright paintings with typographies, subtle inclusions of collage, forms reminiscent of the Russian Avantgarde and colours designed to tame the spirit. The paintings poised comfortably on the wall, as if made purposely for that particular spot (then again, a couple of weeks earlier at the Aine Art Museum, sheathed by those fab frames, his paintings also gave me the impression of having been born expressly for that room). The artist seems gifted with some magical power, as he has repeatedly proved, to marry artworks and spaces.
Next to Korkalo’s luminous paintings, you found Pertti Lohiniva’s windows to a brownout world of tar or bitumen or liquorice or shoe polishing. This antithesis on the wall, worth of a clash of jedis, benefited and enhanced both parts involved. Lohiniva’s square paintings held hardly any source of light (funny, in a gallery called Valo), hardly any illusion of depth, and hardly any trace of artificial hope. Little happened in them, as anything superfluous had withered. They remained wrapped onto the suggestive presence of their own materiality.
Next to Korkalo’s luminous paintings, you found Pertti Lohiniva’s windows to a brownout world of tar or bitumen or liquorice or shoe polishing. This antithesis on the wall, worth of a clash of jedis, benefited and enhanced both parts involved. Lohiniva’s square paintings held hardly any source of light (funny, in a gallery called Valo), hardly any illusion of depth, and hardly any trace of artificial hope. Little happened in them, as anything superfluous had withered. They remained wrapped onto the suggestive presence of their own materiality.
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Above: Tuomas Korkalo, 'Avoska da Nebraska', 'Sommitelma Cooperin testille' and 'Sommitelma Gustav Klutsikselle', acrylic, watercoulour and japanese ink on canvas, 170 x 120 cm (each), 2019
Middle: Korkalo's and Lohiniva's works on the wall. Clash of jedis.
Below: Pertti Lohiniva, 'Pimeä laskeutuu', 'Thin lines between love and hate', oil on canvas, 50 x 50 cm. (each) 2018
Middle: Korkalo's and Lohiniva's works on the wall. Clash of jedis.
Below: Pertti Lohiniva, 'Pimeä laskeutuu', 'Thin lines between love and hate', oil on canvas, 50 x 50 cm. (each) 2018
A few steps away, Juha Koskiniemi proved to be a painter of moments. He makes paintings, in which the way of applying paint is subjugated to the story in hand. That has usually never been my cup of tea. However, when it’s well made, when the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ waltz together in ways that make you smile, I too take my hat off. In one of his canvases in the show, a dying man laid down in the back seat of a red convertible, blessed by his ex-wife who, holding a large crucifix in her hand, can’t wait to start picking blueberries nearby. In another, a diligent worker awaits impassively the end of his shift, in a factory that has been abandoned for years. Nothing makes this loyal employee move from his post, nothing, not even a menacing approach of a lava flow. And in a third one, a man is forever lost in the undergrowth of the garden of this own house, which he had recently bought, away from everything and everybody, following his own romantic notions of living in nature.
Risto Immonen’s piece in steel, immediately made me think of the great Spanish sculptor Pablo Gargallo’s worked metals from the first half of the XX century. Immonen's sculpture, the only floor piece in the exhibition, silently guard the room when everyone is gone, making sure none of its cousin artworks misbehave when the lights of Galleria Valo go off.
Heaven lasts what lasts a sigh. So, when the lights of Valo did go off I retraced my steps to Musta Kissa. On the way I bumped into my friend Elo who was taking a walk with his dog Samsara. I went once more through the batwing doors of Musta Kissa to find refuge in the dive's paradise of exuding balmy humanity, redemptive sense of humour and broken songs.
Risto Immonen’s piece in steel, immediately made me think of the great Spanish sculptor Pablo Gargallo’s worked metals from the first half of the XX century. Immonen's sculpture, the only floor piece in the exhibition, silently guard the room when everyone is gone, making sure none of its cousin artworks misbehave when the lights of Galleria Valo go off.
Heaven lasts what lasts a sigh. So, when the lights of Valo did go off I retraced my steps to Musta Kissa. On the way I bumped into my friend Elo who was taking a walk with his dog Samsara. I went once more through the batwing doors of Musta Kissa to find refuge in the dive's paradise of exuding balmy humanity, redemptive sense of humour and broken songs.
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Juha Koskiniemi, Nimetön, oil on canvas, 60 x 80 cm / 80 x 100 cm. 2018
