THE FINNISH SOUL LANDSCAPE. FINNISH FANTASY ART FROM THE 1890s TO THE 1990s
THE FINNISH SOUL LANDSCAPE. FINNISH FANTASY ART FROM THE 1890s TO THE 1990s
September 8, 1998 – October 4, 1998
Press Release:
The exhibition The Finnish Soul Landscape is a collaboration between the Exhibition Exchange Center FRAME and the Pori Art Museum. It has toured Japan for almost a year, being displayed at the Kitakyushu Art Museum, the Suntory Museum in Osaka, and the Sapporo Museum of Contemporary Art. After its tour, it will be presented to the Finnish public at the Pori Art Museum from September 8 to October 4, 1998. The exhibition is a conceptual journey into the Finnish culture’s ‘unconscious’—the experiences and memories that may not be immediately visible but influence our expectations and perceptions. The exhibition, featuring over 70 works, introduces ten artists whose work draws from Finnish Symbolist and Surrealist traditions, explored through the lens of dialogic artist pairs:
Fairy Tales, Dreams, and Death: HUGO SIMBERG (1873-1917) AND OUTI HEISKANEN (b. 1937)
For Hugo Simberg, symbolism was the essential condition for his entire body of work. His art is based on European trends of his time, but at the same time, it reflects the spirit of national romanticism, drawing inspiration from Finnish folk tales and landscapes. For Simberg, the authentic and original was found in his own thoughts and imaginations.
Outi Heiskanen’s works, which blend joy, nostalgia, and romantic irony, focus on similar themes: sorrow, love, joy, birth, and death. Heiskanen’s fairytale-like figures are symbolic characters inspired by various cultures, living subconsciously within typically Finnish mental landscapes.
They See What We Cannot See: OTTO MÄKILÄ (1904-1955) AND SUSANNE GOTTBERG (b. 1964)
Otto Mäkilä’s modernist dream imagery is found in familiar, domestic, and maritime landscapes. These surreal, metaphysical visions often blur the boundary between life and death, or the spiritual and material realms. In Mäkilä’s reality, both the internal and external worlds merge.
Susanne Gottberg paints ‘paintings of paintings’. In her double images, a new perspective opens to the viewer: we believe we are looking at a vanishing point in perspective, when in reality, we are looking at a vanishing point behind us. Gottberg’s paintings, which test our understanding of reality, reveal our susceptibility to illusions.
Playful, Sardonic Eros: KAUKO LEHTINEN (b. 1925) AND KIRSI MIKKOLA (b. 1959)
Kauko Lehtinen’s distorted figures are created with masterful line control. In their erotic and playful intensity, one can sense influences from Picasso as well as from classical masters like Rembrandt and Rubens.
Kirsi Mikkola’s self-ironic works parody stereotypical images of women and female sexuality. The serene and silent stillness of her reclining women unites corporeality and imagination, pointing to something ordinary and unpretentious, yet firmly grounded in the world.
Spiritual, Toned/Excited Color: MAUNO MARKKULA (1905-1959) AND HENRY WUORILA-STENBERG (b. 1949)
Like many Finnish Expressionists, Mauno Markkula focused primarily on landscape painting. He himself said he painted his fantasies. In his works, the moon spreads its light, and the sun scorches everything around it.
Henry Wuorila-Stenberg’s vivid color fantasies are grounded in the artist’s interest in Eastern religions. His color splendor followed a period of asceticism, where he used only black and white. Now, light also plays a vital role: a strong experience combined with both internal and external light.
Traces of Memory, Signs of the Past: JUHANI HARRI (b. 1939) AND MARTTI AIHA (b. 1952)
Juhani Harri is fascinated by everything that reminds him of the past. He collects objects discarded by others, weathered by time and nature, and builds his own nostalgic world from them. His passion for the past reveals a longing for childhood memories filled with imagination and fantasy.
Martti Aiha is known both as a monumental sculptor and as a creator of refined, calligraphic structures. The forms and symbols derived from calligraphy are like thoughts dressed in words, which the artist transforms into a new, archetypal script. It is a universal language familiar to all people.
The exhibition is supported by the Ministry of Education, Finnair, the cities of Pori, Espoo, and Oulu, and the Finnish Association of Municipalities.
Translated with ChatGPT