I was lucky enough to visit some extremely decent international pavilions in Venice Biennale 2013. Each country had called forth some of their most aspiring artists, resulting to an aesthetically varied, intriguing and thought-provoking overall result. Naturally, some of these pavilions caught my eye. One of these was the Finnish Exhibition, curated by Mika Elo, Marko Karo and Harri Laakso, which included the Aalto Pavilion with works of Antti Laitinen and the Nordic Pavilion, introducing Terike Haapoja.
For the sake of a proper analysis of this work, it would be preferable to simultaneously talk about both of these pavilions as they were connected with a contradictory but at the same time complementary relationship. However, since this would come off as a confusing rather than an enlightening conversation, I decided to include only Antti Laitinen’s work. I encourage you though to visit Haapoja’s website as her work is more than inspiring.
When the main medium of an artwork is pure nature, which one becomes the passive receiver of the concept: the artist or nature itself? The exhibition includes Tree Reconstruction (2013), Forest Square I,II,III (2013), Untitled (Nails and Wood) (2013), Lake Deconstruction (2011) and It’s My Island & VI (2007), with Laitinen constantly questioning the centrality of the human subject. The meeting point of these works are the fact that the artist uses natural resources to create forms impregnated by the concept of structural normalization in an environment that does not follow up but is rather kept untouchable, in its prime form.
Latinen manages to create artwork that, although most of the times is still and presented on two dimensional images, narrates the process of the making-of while at the same time, leaving the viewer to think about the aftermath. In other words, the presented construction narrates the human power on nature as a medium but the logical aftereffect presents nature as the active factor of the artist’s work. Indeed, man can build a cube out of a frozen lake (Lake Deconstruction) but despite the strength of the final construction, it is only logical that the ice will gradually melt down, leaving nature and science retake over this game of power.
The tragicomic element of Laitinen’s work lies on the fact that he is using mediums and techniques almost from the archaic eras while commenting on contemporary society’s issues. A great example of this hides behind It’s My Island where the artist builds a small dimensioned private island in the middle of nowhere, questioning the extend in which the things we create with our own hands can ever truly belong to us.
The intriguing element of Finland’s presence in Biennale is that in 2011, the Finnish pavilion was effectively damaged by a tree that fell on Aalto’s structure. On top of that, the pavilion was mainly made out of Finland’s traditional construction material: wood. See any relevance?