Pauliina Kaasalainen
All roads lead to Rome
Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari 2
14.2.–2.3.2014
“Jarno calls himself a modern man. He is the manly equivalent of a Madonna and a whore, a modern man and a caveman, which is now required from all men, according to him. The modern man appears when he’s afraid. And he’s afraid of so many things. He’s afraid that he is not man enough or that he is too much of a man, both making him feel bad because he has such a poor self-esteem. For example, he’s afraid that his opinions are somehow banal or stupid, too simple. If necessary, the modern man is a joke, but there’s always something hidden and dishonest about it. I’m pretty sure that he uses it to safeguard himself, to set up traps around himself to make people trip before they get too close. For example, Jarno says that he likes culture and that he would rather support culture than the current economic religion. But of course that’s not enough if you want to be smart, so you also have to have more specific opinions. He thinks that modern art, in other words contemporary art, is in a way better than for example national painters because modern art is more challenging and goes deeper. However, whenever he goes to an exhibition or something, he always says that he doesn’t understand it, which means that he doesn’t like it.
He has a condescending attitude, like “Hey, I’m just looking, I don’t have to know anything, but I just don’t get it” and I guess that’s fine, but he never likes anything. If he’s with suitable people, like other lovers of contemporary art, he might say that the Ateneum museum has pretty good artworks, but then he would also add that “if you’re trying to do a realistic painting, it would have to be perfect and not like the inaccurate arms or legs painted by Edelfelt”. So he’s against everything. If he was sincere, then it would be fine if he thought that the purpose of art is to look at it. It’s actually a nice idea that art can be approached and it can give you inspiration to do your own thing, but he just does not like anything. Maybe he just likes to be critical because his ignorance is not silent. Instead, he sometimes gets angry about an exhibition text if it’s too fancy or if the writer is a smart ass, like the text was only read by art critics because it contains jargon about space and stuff, or if the text is too banal, like someone telling that the exhibition is about their life and feelings or their trip to Italian vineyards or something. Then he may not be able to look at the text at all, except that is the exact reason why Jarno says that he doesn’t read those texts anyway. However, he always does read them, but he says that he doesn’t read them before the experience of looking at the works.
However, often I feel that he cannot look at anything if he’s not in some way able to accept what the artist or someone else has written about those things on the paper. Sometimes when I have been somewhere with women, I have realized this because it’s so different that Jarno takes everything so seriously and is somehow convinced that the artists always take it super seriously too. And I don’t mean that they either take their exhibition seriously or they are just there for fun, but Jarno hates it if someone explains too much. However, when talking about seriousness he’s in a way always looking for the right answer to everything, but he actually explains too much himself. He doesn’t understand that if he is in favor of the experience, then he should accept the fact that the experience is not waiting in the gallery. Instead, it comes from looking at the artworks. Not everything is ready. It’s the same with everything else. It’s largely up to the viewer how they react to different things.
If something contains criticism of certain structures, it doesn’t necessarily have to mean that they have to get on their soapboxes to shout their opinions. Instead, it may also contain a lot of humor and it could be, for example, very cynical in nature. And if someone is very cynical, they may actually turn it all upside down and be so cynical that you just have to laugh. I personally think that these are the things where you find… well… poetry. For example, if something leaves a mark on me or Jarno, it’s really great. For example, I go see some sculptures or installations and soon I have a story in my head that all roads do not lead to Rome, which was the name, but for example to a room and when all the installation guys try to go through the same hole, they all try to escape our reality. When I tried to explain this to Jarno, he was very nonchalant as he had just begun reading the exhibition text and he said that it’s stupid if they all try to squeeze through the same hole. I was like “Yeah, tell me about it!” He didn’t understand what I was saying at all.”
Dave Berg
