Timescape : Finnish contemporary art

Finland, like all the Scandinavian countries, is technically one of the most advanced societies. One of the strengths of the culture, however, is its continued strong ties to nature.

This earthbound heritage was especially strong with the National Romantic movement late last century. In music Jean Sibelius belongs to the era, in visual arts the classical names of Akseli Gallén-Kallela, Pekka Halonen and Eero Järnefelt. Also during the productive days of functionalism 1920-1950 the Finns brought the soft natural line to the straight corners of internationalism. Alvar Aalto in architecture and Tapio Wirkkala and Timo Sarpaneva in design earned their fame just by introducing natural phenomena to industrial production.

Contemporary artists are using their Nokia mobile telephones, nuclear icebreakers, and Volvo cars as tools to find the ancient inside themselves. What kind of human heritage has accumulated in their genetic memory? Which parts from the rule of Czarist Russia, Royal Sweden or Catholic Rome, Hanseatic Germany, Finnish-Ugrian blood and the Saami Lapps still co-exist in their body? Medieval wooden sculpture with cracked paint combines with the thousand mentioned stone graves miles from the Bronze Age, and flavoured with the epics of Stone Age rock paintings and rock carvings from 8000 years ago.

Natural history dominates the landscape and perhaps precisely because of that, the ecological cycles determine the circumstances. How does the long time happen? Finnish contemporary art has a keen interest in the perspectives of seasons, where on ice age is but a short period.

TIMESCAPE introduces eight major contemporary Finnish artists.

Olavi Lanu made his international debut at the Venice Biennale 1978, when all his sculpture pieces were done in natural materials. The bending figure was a growing willow, birch people were flying out from the trunks. Carl-Erik Ström uses his conceptual camera in letters, the installation a time machine. Leena Luostarinen's romanticism is enriched with the logic of alchemy, while Sinikka Tuominen turns her eyes to the patterns of DNA nets. Ilkka Juhani Takalo-Eskola performs "foot path pictures" in a swamp. Lauri Astala bakes the primordial clay to development histories, and Antero Kare reverts back to the beginning of life in bacteria and virus. Even the playful postmodern Jan-Erik Andersson crosses the Alps, a heart in his left hand, a knife in his right hand.

The curator of TIMESCAPE, Antero Kare, is a leading personality in Finnish art. He has acted as the board member of the International Art Critics' Association AICA. Founded the Tampere School of Art and Communications, founded the Visual Finland Foundation in New York and exhibited extensively in Europe and the United States.