objects, traces, cues, Oksasenkatu 11, Helsinki
For some reason the Helsinki art system seems overly invested in the solo exhibition as a form. That’s why a thoughtfully put together group show registers as a highlight. Organised by Eero Karjalainen and Leevi Toija at artist-run space Oksasenkatu 11, objects, traces, cues was cool, I thought. The exhibition was framed to be about labour and the public sphere, but struck me as psychoanalytical: a ground floor scattered with the debris of waking life and a dark basement with Surrealist puppetry and rituals of fire. I couldn’t think to mention any artwork above the rest, which suggests a curious balance in the show’s composition.
CONK, Pitted Dates, Helsinki
I’ve been feeling weary in the cul-de-sac of contemporary art’s political and thematic overdetermination, which is why this year I gravitated to exhibitions that seemed to operate on the level of intuition, sensibility, and visual pleasure. Pitted Dates is a Helsinki space that excels at vibes-based selection and mostly opts out of about-ness. Its latest show, CONK, took place in a new, larger (and probably temporary) space in a former slaughterhouse area that gave the whole thing an unlikely New-York-City-in-the-1980s feel. Frans Nybacka’s large painting Satyricon (2024) was a highlight.
15th Baltic Triennial: Same Day, Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius
I felt like a frenemy of this show, hypnotically drawn to it while also being vaguely irritated by it. The opening weekend of the Baltic Triennial in Vilnius had a glamour to it that well-intentioned, Lutheran, Nordic institutions never quite manage to pull off. Yet responses were mixed, with people commenting on the show’s opacity. I appreciated the refreshing absence of overwrought high production value “biennial art” and the coolly underwhelming focus on the everyday. My favourite moments took place in the CAC’s atrium, where solo performances by dance scene favourites Eszter Salamon and Dana Michel resonated under the open sky. I was also captivated by four white plastic trash cans carrying the Nestlé logo (by Jason Dodge, I was told, although it was intentionally impossible to confirm this from the booklet). Ian Law’s wallet with eight pieces of paper containing fragmented text casually placed on the floor also deserves a mention; I can’t help but love a nonchalant thing.
Jaakko Pallasvuo is an Helsinki-based artist. His comic-strip mini-essays on the Instagram account avocado_ibuprofen have more than 117,000 followers.
For this year’s contributions to the Advent Calendar, see here
