A lecture about career development?

I was asked the other day to give a lecture about artistic work and career development. Sigh... I do not know if my lecture was successful, but I got some good feedback.

In 1996 and later in 2000 I gave up two permanent jobs, which would have guaranteed me a fairly good pension -academic and administrative stuff. I do not regret leaving them.

What I do know is that when your career does not 'develop' bitterness, watching others and evil talk come into the picture. Though it might only be human (also not unknown to me, really), I loath it. Too much time and one's energy is wasted into jealousness.

A show at the Kerava Art Museum, Nov. 18th

Book launching on Oct. 29th

I'm afraid this is now almost two years late. It took lot of time to get the funding, and lots of water has been running under the bridges of Tama River in Tokyo. I am still showing the works in several museums, but I would have had stronger emotions about the project if the book had been published earlier (let's say, about 2005 or 2006). Of course, I have a daughter now, plus new ideas and new series of work, which are keeping me busy. Anyhow, things should be quite fresh when you do them, otherwise your personal feelings about the work (and love towards it) will get weaker.

I have had a various feelings about this, from deep satisfaction to anxiety (I will be a bit shy in showing this to my students, I'm that kind of person, really). One can never be satisfied about these things, I guess.

Anyhow, here it is: IN SITU – 295 by 230 mm with hard covers, 52 full colour pages and essays by Ms. Tamaki Harada (Tokyo) and Ms. Andrea Holzherr (Paris). I am also launching my new label for future publications: 'MORI NO ARI', which can be translated as 'Ant in the Forest'. This actually describes my stubborn methods and patient attitude towards my work quite well. It was quite a surprise to hear that my first name means 'ant' in Japanese. Oh well, please, click the images for a better view! For the book, if you are really really interested, you can contact the gallery Hippolyte.

The most important artwork in Europe?

(Elk Head, 3500 B.C. photograph by Ari Saarto by courtesy of the National Museum of Finland)

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I was asked this spring to name the most personally symbolic artwork in the European art. The europalia.europalis project included a huge show at the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels (artworks chosen by a team of curators and professors), a road movie and an installation with five-minute interviews of artists who had chosen the artworks. I was part of the installation thing.

My choice was an Elk head from Säkkijärvi, a stone cult object (about 1500 B.C.). I have grown a bit tired to artmarket, to the great masters and the phrases which surround the masterpieces. So I did focus on something more anonymous, done by an artist who did never take any art classes, before art museums and academies.

I am fascinated by the burden of history in that piece, by the anonymity of the artist. He was a hunter who surely did know wild game well and could give a piece of stone very elecant form. The moose head was used in a kind of an axe and it is now broken, only a part of it has remained.

Hmm... when did Europa became 'Europa'? Who is that corrupted looking man with tired eyes speaking in the movie? Me? Really?

A Show in Poland

Riitta, my spouse, and me had a little show in the Muzeum Narodowe w Szczecinie (the National Museum in Szczecin, Sept. 23rd – Oct. 28th, 2007) with tremendous help and support from several curators: Mrs. Alla Räisänen, Mrs. Magdalena Lewoc and Ms. Agniezska Gryska. The show was named WANDERINGS AND IMAGINARY MEETINGS (please, click the images):


















Riitta Päiväläinen’s driving force for her artistic work is an interest in old clothing, that she finds from second hand shops and on flea markets. The clothes become symbols or metaphors for silent histories and stories (1).

The concept of VESTIGE brings all the series – Imaginary Meeting, Structura, Camouflage and Aomori Blue Forest – together. VESTIGE has several meanings: footstep, footprint, trace, track, a faint mark or visible sign left by something which is lost, or perished, or is no longer present.

Typical for Riitta Päiväläinen is the variation of the same theme. As a method with clothes and garments she has used ice, wind and reconstruction in a landscape. Installing different kinds of sceneries the landscape becomes a stage, that represents the cycle of life, of birth and death. Her images invite the viewer to imaginary meetings.

Ari Saarto is searching the invisible within the visible. Prevailing themes in all his series are traces, oblivion and vanishing. He raises the question: how long can a memory, a piece of evidence survive in a landscape?

Saarto sees the landscape as an open space into which we can project ourselves. His series - Topography of Fear, In Situ, Aomori Water Walks and Suicide Forest – explore the different layers of the landscape.
The images do not relate to an event; they are neither testimonies nor narrative. His conceptual series borrow subjects from the documentary genre in order to use them to his own artistic ends (2).

The images are suggesting that something has happened on this site and fragile traces are still present. In stead of manifesting his landscapes whisper about something that is simultaneously present and absent.


Curator Alla Räisänen, director of the Northern Photographic Centre, Oulu Finland

(1) Andrea Holzherr, "Riitta Päiväläinen – Private Vocabylary" (2007)
(2) Andrea Holzherr, "Ari Saarto – Memorials” (2007)