Anish Kapoor, Gulliver in the world of Lilliputians

My one second one picture moment with Anish Kapoor.

Photo © Paula Hietaranta

  You are in a womb waiting. It is painfully hot, wet, dark red there. You lose the sense of time and space. Out, out quickly! Suddenly the rays of sunshine pierce the thick round walls – and a moment later you are born to a world of fresh air, light and human voices.

This was my first impression of Leviathan by Anish Kapoor. But what happened afterwards was even more astonishing – it created in my mind a whole process about art and life. Is that the definition of good art - the process it lives in you afterwards, feeds you, questions you?

When the Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor was invited to create an oeuvre to Monumenta 2011 to the Nave of Grand Palais in Paris, he wanted to make something gigantic to a gigantic space. It took nine months, the time of human pregnancy, to think and build this unique work he named as Leviathan, the biblical monster.

And believe me - it is not just a material piece. There you have an unique possibility to go to the very essence of being.

Momenta 2011 is open until 23rd of June. If you cannot go there, go at least to this internet page to hear the artist to explain his work:

http://www.monumenta.com/fr/2011/medias/view/27/rencontre-anish-kapoor-et-jean-de-loisy

 

Tapani Kokko, our man in Paris

A part of the sculpture Les hommes meurent en premier, 2010.

 

When going to Mr. Kokko´s exhibition be prepared to meet a world full of emotions, fears, life and death.

It has been said that men cannot give birth, but this does not apply to Tapani Kokko.

If you ever contemplated what it is to be a man, a woman, a liar, a princess or a mortal, kissed by the death, this wooden explosion of rough chain saw forms and bold colours gives answers to them all.

At the opening night the artist was gleaming with happiness. He had been working two years with this exhibition, and here it was.

”Now I am ready to conquer the world”, he said.

And instead of the long formal speeches he decided to open the exhibition on his own way.

”The ship is usually christened by smashing a bottle of champange to her deck. I will open this exhibition with a handprint of tar.”

And so he did.

The exhibition Les Hommes meurent en premier is open until 1.7.2011 at Institut Finlandais, 60 rue des Écoles, 75005 Paris. Open Tu 12-20, Wed-Sat 12-18.

Visit Finland, learn to fly

It was a surprise to meet a Finnish-American photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen deep under ground in Paris. At metro stations are now huge b/w photos by and of Arno with a tiny text: 187.888 LACS, 179.584 ÎLES.

187 888 lakes, 179 584 islands??? Who did count them?

The pictures are part of a new Visit Finland advertising campaign you see in France and Germany this spring. The idea is of course to seduce people to visit Finland, but I did not get the message - Arno´s amazing, true, utterly personal pictures certainly differ from the usual semi-sweet tourist photos but they do not look very inviting.

Of course they give you the idea that in Finland you may meet naked artists on lonely lakesides, but is it enough? I promise you that Finland is much more – just come and find out yourself!

By the way, if you want to see more pictures by Arno go to his new website arno-rafael-minkkinen.com

And if you want to know more about Finland and how it really looks go to

www.visitfinland.com

Karita, our own celebrity designer

To Karita´s sketchbook is glued a piece of kitchen towel – 

it happened to be the only paper available when the inspiration struck. 

Well, there are celebrity designers and celebrities who just tell what they like and then the designers redesign their ideas. You did not really believe that Madonna designed her H&M collection? Even Kate Moss bag collection for Longchamp, I have been told, has better versions of her own vintage bags.

OK, I think that they don´t even pretend to be designers, they just sell their selling power. 
But now we have in Finland a celebrity designer of our own - Karita Tykkä, fashion model and Miss Finland 1997, known for her beauty and self-discipline, has designed her first jewellery pieces for the Finnish manufacturer Oy Tillander Ab.
The nicest thing in her first collection is the mother-child pendant Luca, named after her baby son. It consists of two intertwined golden flat rings you cannot separate, a symbol of the bond of maternity.
When Karita tells about her ideas, willingness to learn more and visits to the Tillander workshops her eyes are sparkling like – yes, diamonds. There is certainly more to come.

To find out more about the jewellery collections hand-made in Finland look at

http://www.tillander.fi/