the Statement
Fulfillment (Täyttymys)
Fulfillment is a complete work of art through which we search answers to questions occupying our minds. For an artist their work is often an enormous joy and pleasure. It’s something one can’t live without. For us, too. Alongside this personal experience often gape big questions about the justification of making art and about its meaning more broadly.
In the process of Fulfillment we want to think over the starting points of making art and why making art is meaningful. Why can’t we stop creating art?
What are the living conditions of art (and the artist)? Is creating art important, if it makes us sell and buy artistic contents and keep the wheels of economy turning? Is the importance of art in raising questions about society, ecology and morals? Should art increase health and wellbeing? What can be changed by the means of art? Does art have an absolute value?
We want to believe that discussing starting points of creating art has a more broad value in questions about meaningfulness of life and manners of life.
Fulfillment started with an open reading group in Tyrnävä library in October 2020. The purpose of the group was to offer a platform to asking and considering questions. Our working team chose books which we thought had something to offer to debate about the meaningfulness of making art. The reading group also contains a blog (one part of this netsite called Lukupiiri) which is an open platform for discussion. The participation of the working team maintains the thought of studying each individual view of what’s meaningful artwork and reading is a part of the piece of art we work on.
In June 2021 we’ll build an exhibition by working name of Fulfillment in a potato hall. This will be the third “Spud hall” exhibition. The previous ones were in 2014 and 2015 with a slightly different concept. Related to the exhibition we’ll prepare a Summer school, which is open to everyone. In the Summer school we’ll have artists and art philosophers outside our working team to debate the art-related questions we’re considering. We’ll look for viewpoints on contemporary art. What can be contemporary art in all: is it lingering on the frontiers?
The team of Fulfillment:
Pia Hentunen, Jari Haavikko, Eija Hirvonen & Leena Kangas
the Team
Pia Hentunen
I have lived all over the world and settled in Tyrnävä. I studied art in Kankaanpää Art School and in the art institute of Krasnojarsk, Russia.
I started my artist career as a painter and I am keen on transparent materials, with which I can extend painting over its boundaries. It goes
well together with my idea that the world and consciousness are layered.
I’ve gone more towards 3D works (installations and sculpturing).
I am a very restless and curious person so I need to work in very diverse areas.
Even though I am a visual artist, my first education is a researcher (FM-92, animal ecology, mainly running water insects, in the university of Oulu).
I love animals and the whole variety of phenomena of nature. I am constantly thinking relationships between human and other species and constantly getting very disappointed with my expectations of human beings what comes to selfishness and arrogance.
And I am horseaddict. Always.
Leena Kangas
I am a visual artist, painter and critic.
Recently I’ve been working a lot on and of paper.
In my minimalistic, fairly abstract works, I often deal with observations and memories related to places and spaces.
Eija Hirvonen
An idea of encountering defines my art practice, encountering both in a philosophical sense and in a physical reality.
The practice is about connections and disconnections, continuities and about interaction in its various forms.
The focus is on conceptual content but I have also a fascination for tactile perceptions of artist’s work.
The important thing is the process to explore different layers of the subject matter.
I am interested in the place of the art in a society, and I am currently doing a research on utopian thinking in art.
Jari Haavikko
Since 1990s I have been working as a lighting technician, photographer and also a designer, making posters, flyers and typography.
In the two earlier exhibitions by the same workgroup I was responsiple mainly of lighting and set-up.
Täyttymys is not my first art exhibition but it is definitely most extensive and interesting.
This time I have been working with forms and shapes related to plants and flowers. I started with traditional origami paper but soon drifted to all kinds of everyday papers like pages of books and magazines, restaurant bills, wrapping papers, etc.
I am also working with photographs of plants, trying to find the connection between the organic and man-made / handmade forms.
the Books
Täyttymys was started in October 2120 as a reading group (Lukupiiri).
Here’s a list of books:
Jacques Derrida
Eläin joka siis olen (L’Animal que donc je suis; 2015)
Suomentanut Anna Tuomikoski – Tutkijaliitto 2019
Yrjö Sepänmaa
Vihreä päänsärky
Maahenki Oy 2017
Emanuele Coccia
Kasvien elämä – Sekoittumisen metafysiikka (The life of Plants – A Metaphysics of Mixture; 2018)
Suomentanut Jussi Palmusaari – Tutkijaliitto 2020
Alva Noë
Omituisia työkaluja – Taide ja ihmisluonto (Strange Tools – Art And Human Nature; 2016)
suomentanut Tapani Kilpeläinen; niin&näin Tampere 2019
Antti Salminen
Kokeellisuudesta – Historiallisesta avantgardesta jälkifossiiliseen elämään
Osuuskunta Poesia; Helsinki 2015
