BWA Contemporary Art Gallery in Katowice

“Mikko Paakkola, a Finnish painter living in Brussels and the originator of the exhibition A Certain Finland, explained me the genesis of the project. The idea of presenting contemporary Finnish art appeared during the exhibition of Finnish Symbolism from the beginnings of the twentieth century, which was shown some years ago at the Musée d’Ixelles in Brussels.(1) One amongst seven artists of that exhibition was Hugo Simberg.

Two elements can be considered true impulse and starting point for works over the present exhibition. Firstly, it was the high quality of all the works that took part in the Symbolist exhibition. This does speak something about the fact that those artists had been conscious of expressive possibilities of the materials they used and that they had perfectly mastered those possibilities. Another, and, in fact, more important element was the particularity and separateness, a polyvalent marginality of their art.

In practice this marginality was born from the fact that 7 artists from the Symbolist exhibition hadn’t absolutely tried to insert their art within modernism, the main stream of their time, even though that having been the masters in their area, they could easily do it. On the contrary, they had been looking for the most important significance framework for their art in their inside world, as well as in their own culture and surrounding environment. From the general European point of view their attachment to the marginality, which consisted in limiting to their own language, culture and geography could be easily explained as submission. Meanwhile this phenomenon can be perceived also as an important and totally unique exception in relation to the main stream of art near the year 1900. Subjects and themes fathomed in the works of Finnish Symbolists a hundred years ago had very small influence on the origination of the exhibition A Certain Finland. On the contrary, the right observation that the work of numerous Finnish artists still differs from international tendencies, being deeply rooted in local tradition, was very important in this context. Willingly or not, these artists enlighten the concept of locality with a very positive light.”

Timo Valjakka ‘Descendants of the wounded angel’
catalogue fragment
(1) ‘Les mondes intérieurs — Le symbolisme finlandais’. Musée d’Ixelles, Brussels (BE), 10th October 2002 — 12 Januari 2003. Participating artists: Väinö Blomstedt, Magnus Enckell, Akseli Gallén-Kallela, Helene Schjerfbeck, Hugo Simberg, Ellen Thesleff and Ville Vallgren.

The four-language catalogue Certain Finland is the result of the exhibition which was organised by the Museum Atelier 340 from Brussels and presenting the current Finnish art including objects, installations and sculptures. The curators-selected set of works Certain Finland creates a fragmentary and moody image of Finland’s social conditions and ecology.

Artists:
Jussi Heikkilä, Timo Heino, Pekka Jylhä, Kaarina Kaikkonen, Kaija Kiuru, Kaisu Koivisto, Elina Lind, Eero Markuksela, Reima Nurmikko, Jaakko Pernu, Anni Rapinoja, Anu  Tuominen.

• See several book pages
• See catalogue
• Organizers