Jussi Niskanen
Bojoing!
Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari, Jätkä 1
7–22.10.2017
First I think of myself in an imaginary situation where I am a distinguished rock collector. In reality, the world of rocks is foreign to me, but in this fantasy I am a dilettante geologist – more than an amateur but spared from the curses of being a professional. In this fantasy, I am free to go from one place to another and my pants and jacket pockets are filled with different kinds of rare and unique rocks. Also, my backpack is full of rocks. The canvas bag I sometimes have with me and the fanny pack I just bought are, naturally, also totally full of rocks. I often place rocks that are very small and very special inside my socks, between my foot and the insole of my shoe. It is a good place for keeping important small items. In this fantasy, the stone collecting version of me thinks how much rocks could tell us if we could understand what they are saying. In real life, it seems impossible that rocks could talk or even if they did, we humans would hardly be able to understand their language. However, in my fantasy I think that even a dumb person would understand that rocks, which have been witnessing the world for thousands of years, would have so much more to tell and more interesting stories than humans who only spend a mere moment here in comparison to rocks. In my fantasy, I look at my rock collection and think how all the rocks in my imaginary collection rattle in the mill of the world, just like all the other rocks still outside of my collection. As long as the mill of the world keeps spinning them around, they will probably all face the same destiny – a perfectly round ball worn smooth in the mill. The imaginary version of me thinks about a giant washing machine with all the rocks of the world rattling inside and gradually becoming smoother. Oh, how much they rattle. Of course, we cannot hear that noise. Then I see my imaginary rock collection spread out on the floor of a space by the imaginary me. In my mind, I see the collection from above and I slowly move away from it so that the collection is further and further away below me. At first I can see individual rocks, their color differences and their outlines and unique shapes as only few of them have been ground into a perfect sphere by the mill. As I move further and further away from the imaginary rock collection, their outlines merge together and their colors blend with each other so that this first thought ends up in a situation where the rocks in the collection only look like a gray mess.
Then I think of myself again, but not as a rock collector. In this thought I am sitting in a room writing a text for my upcoming exhibition at Galleria Huuto in the autumn of 2017. In my thoughts, I am sitting in this room. I am trying to write the above-mentioned text but my mind is bouncing all over the place, hitting all other matters in the world but not the desired one, the exhibition text. My mind bounces on the room’s surfaces which I have imagined as bland, leaving behind swirling marks in my field of vision. I think about myself thinking about my mind and it bouncing around that room I lazily imagined. When bouncing around manically, my mind finally gets fixed on a ball on the floor and at that very moment my fantasy no longer concentrates on the room around the ball, which only had a very superficial role, or the imaginary me who in this thought only wandered around aimlessly with confused thoughts and without being able to carry out the task at hand. My mind is not able to focus on anything but the ball noticed by the imaginary me, its shape, color, possible feel, elasticity, thermal conductivity, weight, weight distribution, in other words its material evenness and so on. I imagine the ball bouncing, its trajectory in the air, the surface it hits, the physical properties of that surface and the sound the ball would make when hitting that surface. It must be so that if the ball has certain properties and if the surface hit by the ball has certain properties and if certain conditions prevail, then the sound made by the ball when hitting the surface can be described in the form of text, without such loss of information that often occurs when trying to express sounds in a written form, by writing as follows: boing!
This exhibition features my paintings that are pictures depicting the ball I thought about, its possible movement and sound as well as other things I have thought about.
Helsinki-based artist Jussi Niskanen (b. 1984) earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from the Academy of Fine Arts (University of the Arts Helsinki) in 2014.
Exhibition has been supported by Taiteen edistämiskeskus.
Jussi Niskanen
+358 40 7009584
jussi.taneli.niskanen(at)gmail.com
