KIASMA MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

On now at the Kiasma Museum of Contemprary Art in Helsinki, are two solo exhibitions by Mika Taanila and Erkki Kurenniemi.  Also on show is Kiasma Hits, a tribute to the 15-year-old museum and to Finnish contemporary art.  The show features 50 artists from the permanent collection, commissioned works, and new acquisitions (including some of which are yet to be made). 

Filmmaker and artist Mika Taanila's work dwells in an intermediate zone between experimental video and documentary filmmaking.  Moving between fact and fantasy, the films are incredibly poetic.  One of my favourite pieces, Six Day Run (2013), is a documentary (based loosely on the biblical story of creation), about a Finnish endurance runner and an ultra-marathon in New York.  Another work, The Most Electrified Town in Finland (2012), examines the construction of the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor and how it is changing the physical landscape of Eurajoki, Finland.

Erkki Kurenniemi, a Finnish pioneer of electronic music and early media art, is considered to be a hybrid of Karl-Heiz Stockhausen, Buckminster Fuller and Steve Jobs.  He is one of the forefathers of mathematical musicology and of computer and media culture in Finland.  Kurenniemi's exhibition, Towards 2048, presents work from his personal archive in hopes of launching a virtual persona based on all documentary information that has collected during his life - photographs, videos, diaries, drawings and paintings - to be downloaded for the online persona's mind.  

Following the interior photos of the museum are some of my top choices from Kiasma Hits.  I loved Hannu Karjalainen's video work titled Man in a Blue Shirt (2000) where the portrait subject is concealed by a veil of acrylic paint running down over his face.  Some other artists featured below are Giovanni Anselmo (canvas and granite), Jacob Dahlgren (ribbon) and collaborative duo Tommi Grönlund + Petteri Nisunen (magnets and steel wire).  All the work on show was excellent and the number of pieces on display was perfect.  Awesome.  Unfortunately I didn't record all the artists names featured below.