Fairy Tale Palaces
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Fairy Tale Palaces is a six-part artwork that spreads across the floors of a daycare centre in Maunula Helsinki. Located on three different floors of the building, the parts making up the work consist of floor paintings, ceramic tiles and solid wood parquet flooring.
The patterns used in the different parts of the work reference floor decorations and ornaments found in historical buildings. Although the scale, materials and colours used differ from the original floors, the patterns have been created in a way that makes it possible to identify the references. Through the exceptional floor patterns the daycare centre gets a share of the grandeur of a mosque courtyard, cathedral and imperial palace, for example. The work is based on the idea that there is something special in the design language of the historical patterns used in architecture and art: if not sacred, then at least sublime and beautiful.
The aim of the work is to cause a disturbance in the chronological time continuum and hierarchies of power by moving spectacular art-historical floor patterns from the past and different countries into the everyday life of today’s Helsinki kindergarten.
Fairy Tale Palace belongs to the collections of the HAM Helsinki Art Museum.
Trackside Treasure
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The facades of a residential block on Lahti’s Jaksonkatu feature images of a long-lost station building. When planning the piece, the artist went through the archives of the Finnish Railway Museum, and found a beautiful watercolored plan of the now lost railway station of Lahti. The building was demolished in 1935 to make way for the current station building. This picture served as the source image of the work.
Fragments of the old building are etched into the surface of the concrete elements by photomechanical means. The five-part work is located on different sides of the facade of the residential block. The pictures are on the same scale as the original station building.
The city of Lahti developed into a city because of the railway and Trackside Treasure is a tribute to its history.
Light Signal from the Shore
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Light Signal from the Shore was a temporary work of public art in the Kalasatama district of Helsinki between October 2019 and February 2020. The two-part work examines the local history of Kalasatama and adjacent areas from the point of view of seafaring and everyday life on the outskirts of town.
The first part of the piece is a light work that was seen at the top windows of housing company Kalasataman Fiskari by those walking around in the Sompasaari canal area. The programmed beacon lit up every twenty minutes in the evenings during a five month period.
The second part of the work consisted of distributing a non-fiction book Sörkan rysäkeisarit – kalastajia, ajureita ja salakuljettajia (The Finnish Literature Society, SKS, 2013) non-fiction book by Eero Haapanen to the new flats completed in Sompasaari throughout the duration of the temporary light work. The book discusses the eventful life of the Karlsson fishing family in Vanhankaupunginlahti bay Kalasatama and elsewhere in Helsinki from the late 19th century to the 1960s. The book reveals how Helsinki and the everyday lives of its residents have changed during the past hundred years.
Light Signal from the Shore was a temporary work by its nature and it belongs to the collections of the HAM Helsinki Art Museum.