DREAMS DRAWN IN THE CLOUDS

-Berndt Arell
Museum Director

In recent years, Kiasma has put on several exhibitions on Asian contemporary art. The Asian society and as a result, its contemporary art are changing rapidly. This has made Asian artists more globally influential than ever before.

When I took on the job of Kiasma's director, my hope was that we would continue presenting Asian contemporary art from fresh perspectives shared by the Finnish and Asian cultures. The exhibition Drawn in the Clouds concentrates on one such perspective: our endeavour to rid ourselves of the shackles of the physical world, to discover new dimensions of being human and to float between dreams and dreaming.

During the planning and making of the exhibition, we had the privilege of meeting many of the artists included in Drawn in the Clouds. They experienced Kiasma in very personal ways. For some the museum's unique architecture was a challenge, while others drew inspiration from it. The exhibition shows how the artists can transform space. In fact, in the process we discovered new dimensions about the Kiasma building. Art transformed its minimalist stairway into a work of art with a message and dressed the grey autumn cityscape in the colours of the rainbow. This exhibition truly fulfils one of the principal missions of a contemporary art museum - to see and present the world in a new way - very tangibly.

The exhibition coincides with two anniversaries: Kiasma's 10th anniversary and the 85th anniversary of Finnair. I want to extend my warmest thanks to Finnair, which has made this unique and extensive display of Asian art possible.

DREAMS, LEAPS AND NOTIONS IN CONTEMPORARY ASIAN ART

The Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma has endeavoured during its ten years of operations to create an active relationship with Asian art. Artists from several Asian countries have been seen over the years in the extensive international ARS exhibitions (2001 and 2006) and in other group exhibitions produced by the museum. Asia got its foot inside Kiasma in earnest quite soon after the museum opened when Cities on the Move, a mega-class synopsis of the cultures of Asian metropolises, was opened, appropriately, in a dramatic style at the turn of the millennium (1999-2000). At that time Asia was ablaze with a rapid economic and culture transformation, a violent collision of old and new, a process that appears only to be gaining in strength and having an increasingly concrete effect on the western world, including Finland. In an interview in the Kiasma magazine (no. 5 1999), Hou Hanru, the Chinese curator of the exhibition, summed up his own perspective on the Finns' relationship with Asia: "Helsinki's status in Europe is in a way the same as Asia's status in the world. It is on the periphery, and has to constantly renegotiate its identity. Finnish and Asian thinking are therefore alike on some subconscious level, event though the cultures are totally different on the outside."

This same wavelength of cultural consciousness is the aim of an exhibition assembled by Kiasma, Drawn in the Clouds. It brings together 12 Asian-born artists from Japan, China and Korea. The objective of the exhibition, which is tightly constructed around the theme, is not to offer a general picture of Asian art today. This would be impossible in its dimensions and too general in its idea. Instead, the exhibition endeavours to highlight content and visual contacting surfaces interwoven with each other between works that are very different. The artists' own voice and imprint remain clearly on what is heard and seen. Drawing in the clouds is a metaphor for the fragility, transparency and capaciousness present in many of the works, and for the pictures being created by the mind. In spite of its name there are actually no drawings; drawing, understood as the creation of forms, figures, spaces and pictures is done using thread, needles, writing or a paperknife instead of a pen. The video works in the exhibition follow the various repeating paths, strategic moves and processes. These, too, are different kinds of "drawings" formed from unseen tracks and trails.

In many of the exhibition's works the personal memories and experiences of the artists play a leading role. Half of the artists in the Drawn in the Clouds exhibition are living and working at this moment outside their home country, part of the nomadism that is so typical of contemporary art. This has not, however, meant a rejection of their own cultural background; in many, awareness of their cultural identity has strengthened in their new home. Symbolic and nostalgic "returns home" can be perceived in the themes of the works. Home and residence act as a place where something happens, for example in the video works of Wang Gongxin, Jiang Zhi and Hiraki Sawa. Do Ho Shu has used a transparent textile to create the gable wall and all its details of his home in Korea. His thin, breath-like works about his home, being light and collapsible like a tent, could be imagined as being the perfect type of work for an artist constantly moving from one place to another. For artists working in a global environment, travelling itself has become part of their work and productive working hours. All this travelling, which is part of the planning and implementation of the exhibition, with its artists going in different directions and the boxes that contain their works travelling in the hold, can in an imaginary way be placed in Hiraki Sawa's hypnotic video where miniature aeroplanes with their unseen passengers gradually take over the airspace of his London dwelling until they finally flee through the gap in the window to the sky, to be with real aeroplanes.

The Drawn in the Clouds exhibition moves concretely between many different spaces and floors. Some of the works spread outside the museum's normal exhibition premises to the stairway, entrance hall and café. Hong Kong artist Tsang Kin-wah occupies the labyrinthine premises in Kiasma's southern stairway with his text ornament installation and its associated sound elements, and at the same time the Korean June Bum Park with his videos engages in dialogue with architect Steve Holl's design under the sculptural ramp. A magical book swimming in blue water in the work of Korean Ki-bong Rhee welcomes visitors by the entrance hall. The windows of the Café Kiasma are illuminated during the exhibition by two large-scale photographs of Jiang Zhi, depicting a neon rainbow glowing above snow-capped mountains. As the exhibition is on display during the darkest time of the year in Finland, from November to the beginning of February, these impressive photographs offer us the chance to make an imaginary journey far away to the East, to the Himalayas, where the sun one again arises in the spring.


An excerpt of the catalogue text by Jari-Pekka Vanhala.


The catalogue with 144 pages and full colour illustrations is available at Kiasma Shop and also from www.kiasma.fi/shop

The catalogue is edited by by curators Arja Miller and Jari-Pekka Vanhala.
Graphic design by Chris Bolton.

FINNAIR - THE ART OF FLYING SINCE 1923

-Jukka Hienonen
President and CEO, Finnair plc

Finnair is one of the oldest airlines in the world, celebrating its 85th anniversary this year. We are proud of our distinguished heritage, but we also look keenly to the future, towards the rising sun.

The Silk Road created a connection between Asia and Europe in ancient times. It was a trade route, but it also conveyed artistic influences.

Finnair has determinedly pursued a policy of building a bridge between Europe and Asia. The modern Silk Road of the skies runs through Finland and Helsinki.

Over its history, Finnair has acted as an ambassador for Finnish art abroad. In our anniversary year, we are happy to offer Finns the opportunity to get acquainted with Asian contemporary art through the Drawn in the Clouds exhibition showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma.

The featured artists represent major Finnair destinations in Asia: Jiang Zhi, Tsang Kin-wah, Wang Gongxin and Li Wei are from China; Yoko Ono, Hiraki Sawa, Chiharu Shiota, Kako Ueda and Yuken Teruya are from Japan; and Do Ho Suh, June Bum Park and Ki-bong Rhee are from Korea, whose capital Seoul was added to the list of Finnair destinations in June 2008.

I hope you will enjoy this trip to the world of Asian contemporary art.