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Platform r.f. Posts

Meeting Point

Published 05/05/2001 by Platform

Finn Fem Fel | 4.5–27.5.2001

One of contemporary art’s most characteristic features has been the attempt to take art out of the art institutions and into life and society, so as to create points of contact and networks on a neutral plane, using unconventional forms. With our site-related project we have consciously tried to go in the opposite direction, to bring life/society into a new space for contemporary art in Vaasa.

The Meeting Point Project was divided into two parts. The first started with a series of concrete events, in which invited guests and visitors played an active roll. This part was concentrated and limited in time. The second part was the temporary exhibition in Platform’s gallery space. This was accessible whenever the gallery was open. The results of the work, which arose out of discussions, lectures, documentation, transformations and so on, became physical material in the project room. In the gallery the office landscape met neo-expressionism.

Meeting Point was intended to break the ordinary pattern of one-off visits to exhibitions, and instead to focus on conversation, lectures, actions and more. Here, FinnFemFel had the role of consultant rather than producer, thus acting as a kind of filter. The events organized were informal and simple, and were devoted to exchanges of ideas and to the possibility of producing new or unexpected connections. They took on their own visual shape, so that content and form complement each another. The boundaries between the different areas became fluid.

The character and aims of the events varied; they were about establishing contacts between people who live in the town and those who are visiting with the primary goal to bring together people from various areas of art, knowledge and society.

During the project, Meeting Point used various media – the daily press, radio/TV, the internet and so on – simultaneously, to reinforce the interaction, or to complete the circle between art and life. The movement described above, from outside into the gallery and from there out again, creates new identifications and interfaces for all those who were actively or passively involved in the project.

 

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Certainly not art

Published 05/04/2001 by Platform

Cesare Pietrouisti | 5.4–22.4.2001

One hundred things that are certainly not art was a project proposed by Cesare Pietroiusti and realized together with a group of artists; Eija Leinonen, Tuomo Väänänen, Serafima Borotinskij, Ulrika Ferm, Mia Damberg, Fia Antus, Albert Braun, Maria Nordbäck, Hannah Kaihovirta-Rosvik and Peter Rosvik. These artists asked 100 persons in Vaasa to show them something that is certainly not art and then to lend it for the exhibition. A certain number of objects and descriptions or documentation where therefore collected and exhibited and later a catalogue was published with all the 100 things.

Invited to exhibit at Platform, the Italian artist Cesare Pietroiusti, sent a list of seventy-five proposals (his so called Non functional thoughts) among which the group of Vaasa artists could choose one to be realized for this occasion. In order to promote, within the local community, a discussion on the limits, and on the possible meaning of contemporary art, these artists decided to make an investigation on what is believed to be “certainly not art”. By exhibiting these “certainly not art” objects in an art gallery an interesting paradox arises. The different levels of authorship represent another important aspect of this project. The authorship, in fact, ranges from the initial proposal of one artist, through the active cooperation of a group of artists, to the final decisions and choices of one hundred people.

With Cesare Pietroiusti´s words, a Non functional thought can be “a way of observing fragments of reality, of creating connections among events, people, places, perceptions, or beliefs… an idea that is not directly determined by carrying out an activity, and therefore appears without a reason”. His practice is “an attempt to better articulate these thoughts by building a communicative context in which they can be recognized by others as part of a shared patrimony.”Hopefully such recognition can contribute, in a simple way, to offer different ways of thinking, perceiving, and looking at things.

The second room was an video installation picturing some homeless people living in a back yard; drawings of faces on big papers in rolls, standing by themselves on the floor; and the garbage produced during the construction of the exhibition was left on the floor, strengthening the stinking atmosphere of a shabby backyard. racetrack.

Cesare Pietroiusti is based in Rome, Italy.

[The beginning of a text by Ralf Andtbacka, writer, based in Vaasa. The text is a reaction to the concept ‘nonfunctional’ and included alongside the objects in the catalogue]

The plan is as follows: to walk from my home at Skolhusgatan 47 in Vasa to Platform, at Kyrkoesplanaden 19, not by taking any of the ordinary routes, but by relying on an element of chance. My route will be determined by flipping a coin, for instance at street corners. I will flip the coin at points I consider ‘natural’ or interesting. If there are more than two options at any point, I will first make a selection and then use the coin. One of the two choices will always be a route taking me closer to the gallery. If I arrive there I will be delighted, but I will consider my mission fully accomplished even if I end up somewhere else. There is no given purpose either to the process or to the outcome of it. Similarly, there are no given metaphorical or therapeutic implications. The text is open to any interpretation. It is partly inspired by the concept of non-functional thought, which Cesare Pietroiusti describes in the following manner: Each idea that is not directly determined by carrying out an activity, and therefore appears without reason, can be considered non-functional. This impractical idea, even if superfluous, is lived in a non-compulsory and non-neurotic manner. It is an apparition whose appearance cannot be predicted, and whose purpose is not clear. During my walk I will record various facts – i.e. the time, my location, people and things I encounter – but I will also allow myself to react on any impulse, however whimsical. These imaginative acts do not provide a key to the project. Since this is a commissioned text, there is an aspect of necessity involved; but I am also very much aware of the fact that I can choose not to write it or, even better, let the coin make the decision for me, here and now. […]

 

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Poissa

Published 15/12/2000 by Platform

Jouni Partanen | 8.12.2000–07.01.2001

Poissa. Joni Partanen works in different medias. In Poissa he used old drawings of penises, which he copied so that only details could be seen; a white string running through a black paper. The copies he used for papering the first room of the gallery. It looked like a forest of birches – a three that is a popular symbol of Finland. On the floor there was a metal sarcophagus, which also was used on different locations in town; the “box” had the shape of a humanlike body and two holes for the eyes. Partanen used this “box” in performances where he would lie inside unnoticed until someone looks down through the holes and sees his eyes.

The second room was an video installation picturing some homeless people living in a back yard; drawings of faces on big papers in rolls, standing by themselves on the floor; and the garbage produced during the construction of the exhibition was left on the floor, strengthening the stinking atmosphere of a shabby backyard. racetrack.

Jouni Partnanen is a finnish artist based in Lahti.

 

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Fictional Hometown

Published 15/11/2000 by Platform

Maja Rohwetter & Gabriele Künne | 3.11–30.11.2000

Both artist are German and had a residency during a longer time in one of the Nordic countries, Maja Rohwetter in Finland and Gabriele Kûnne in Sweden. Both dealt with their new environment specifically on a modern urban basis. Rohwetter combines photos of different small towns in Finland in photoshop and uses these collages for her paintings. The results are paintings of seemingly recognizable places where everything looks familiar but something is different, you just can’t point out what. Künne deals with roads and bridges, highways and viaducts seen as enormous sculptures in the cityscape. She uses these shapes for making sculptures.

Parallel to Fictional Hometown a 3-day seminar was arranged on city planning, the city as living environment and the place of art in the city, inviting a tenant association that deal with the parks in Vaasa (Jaakko Vainiopää, Kantakaupungin asukasyhdistys ry), an association of shops around the town square (Tuula Wägar; Vasa affärscentrum rf) that usually arrange some strange occasions on the market square where they put up a fence around it and you’ll have to pay to get in, the town architect (Kalle Viljanen) and a researcher and architect from Helsinki (Panu Lehtovuori) and an architect from the neighboring city Jakobstad (Roger Wingren).

 

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Nordic Light

Published 15/09/2000 by Platform

Elina Brotherus, Jörgen Erkius & Oskar Lindström | 26.9–29.10.2000

The first exhibition Platform showed was called Nordic light. It consisted of work from three Nordic artists – Elina Brotherus, Jörgen Erkius and Oskar Lindström. The common aspects of these works were that they contain the aspect of light, dealt with deliberately or not – in various ways.

Jörgen Erkius showed a video, which looked like a homemade puppet theatre; a cardboard box with a snowy, symmetrical landscape. In the middle there was a hole where the artist stuck his dick through and glued a yellow paper sun on it. In the video the sun is rising and sinking, for three days in ultrarapido.

Oskar Lindström showed a video where he sings Twinkle, twinkle little star. He is not a good singer and every time he does a mistake somebody – you see only the artist’s face and a hand – slaps him on the cheek.

Elina Brotherus showed atmospheric photographs of nightly city landscapes; for instance an illuminated bridge shot on a foggy night.

For the first exhibition the local atmosphere almost required something you easily identify and relate to. The romantic aspect Nordic Light implies, gave the exhibition a connection to themes frequently used by other local and national and Scandinavian art institutions. The exhibition questioned if these artist have, or even if there is a common Nordic background in relation to art history. It felt important to show a variety instead of pointing out similarities, though the common title still remained. As we saw it, due to the chosen thematic local – global, Platform should start close to the local.

 

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