Grandma’s underwear wardrobe takes off: an exhibition opened in Mänttä’s old factory that makes you want to look at it for a long time

To old light leaks into the factory building from here and there, the air moves. The walls and floor creak quietly against each other.

The Pekilo building, which has long served as the home of Mänttä’s visual arts weeks, used to incubate feed protein, which was produced from the raw material spit out by the local sulfite factory. In the high rooms, the rhythm of material and texture prevailed – and still prevails, after the opening of Mänttä’s 28th visual arts weeks.

Fresh executive director Sampsa Virkajärvi takes a blanket and goes to lie down on the floor of a large exhibition space, under a chandelier-like installation hanging in the air. Rapinojan Years teos Natural lights is made from the papayas of moose, hare and rusak. Frames that resemble Himmel, crib Mobile or wind chimes sway in the wake of people passing by. Somehow they carve the air between them.

Virkajärvi invites visitors to slow wonder. Sculptor Heli Ryhänen curated exhibition called Puhallus focuses as much on the works as on the empty space around them. Many windows and doors are open, from above you can see down and from room to room. The works can be viewed past and through each other. The scale ranges from gigantic to microscopic.

Air splitting Natural lights-near the work also hangs another illusion of weightlessness: made of thousands of translucent acrylic beads Hanna Vihriälän Blow flower. Between the exhibition floors, a 14-meter-long figure of a dandelion, consisting of more than 5,500 wires, rests in the air intact and with petals, receiving the phases of light.

“Here you can see Helin [Ryhänen] thinking. You can look at the work from below, up close and far, from different angles,” says Virkajärvi.

The exhibition tempts you to look at it for a long time – so long that the senses get a little confused. There is so little movement that you become sensitive to it. Virkajärvi says that the space has also been demolished and gutted out of sight. On the other hand, there are remote nooks and crannies, dark rooms with the work in the middle like a plug.

All edges of the space require attention. Antti Oikarinen from floor to ceiling, 12.5 meters Monument, a thin strip of wood colored in pencil, looks like an extension cord at first glance. Its long shadow pierces the other works in the room.

Next to Erika R Travel pulling towards the floor. A miniature mountain made of mixed media makes you imagine toddlers or ants in the middle. Virkajärvi assures that both have free access to the exhibition.

For many works, their size and shape require the artist’s participation in the installation, says curator Ryhänen on the phone. The exhibition was put together together, regardless of work roles. It united artists coming from different parts of Finland and at different stages of their careers in a special way.

Powder color tricot, waistband and lace are strung together on welded metal strips. Layer by layer, the fabric stretches, twists and pleats against the hard support chain. It’s as if grandma’s underwear closet, fed into a surreal manacle, is about to take off.

Powder fall there is one Nora Sederlöfin of three works on the ground floor of Pekilo. Sederlöf, who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, is a clothing designer and tailor by previous training. In his works, the traditional strictly controlled form of sculpture, such as welded metal, meets the freer, more associative descent often characteristic of clothing.

According to Sederlöf, the boundary between clothing and artwork or product and art object is often artificial. The works on display at Pekilo could easily have a wearable form alongside them. He says that he builds his works little by little with a sense of anticipation so that the space created inside and around the work is also emphasized.

The piston visual arts weeks is Finland’s largest contemporary art summer exhibition. The exhibition, put together by a curator who changes every year, has been held every year since 1993 and since 1999. The curator is chosen by a small local association established for the purpose, Mänttän kuvataiteen yvästät ry.

The artistic thinking of the respective curator can be seen in the exhibition from floor to ceiling. Heli Ryhänen, who has had a long career as a sculptor, has brought a sense of space to Pekilo and its surroundings – not just space or distances, but also a multifaceted weighing of the concept of space. According to Ryhänen, the scale of the premises, both in physical reality and in subjects and themes, have guided the shape of the exhibition.

“I also wanted to bring works where spatiality can be found inside the work. Of course, someone may wonder why that is [Touko Hujasen valokuvareportaasi] Forest family there is, but in the activities of the depicted family there is that spatiality, distance and perspective,” says Ryhänen.

Photo series awarded as reportage of the year 2018 Forest family follows completely self-sufficient living Lasse Nordlund with his family. In the same year, Hujanen was named photojournalist of the year, and he also won the portrait series.

In Pekilo, Hujanen’s pictures are on the wall in a narrow spot: you can look at them either very close or from the opposite side of the building, across the space that opens downwards. The pictures have the heavy, demanding light of the evening. Tight and loose, linen and sweat.

For example, a magazine photo is rarely viewed from afar. In Pekilo, various lofts, stairs and permannos make the exhibition space resemble a theater space in some places. Looking far enough is enough, even for small and two-dimensional works. Many of them deal with the loss of the forest. Logging takes space from the forest by clearing space in its place.

Tila and distances are paired with overflowing textures in the Puhallus exhibition. Melissa Sammalvaaran forest ryujs, Kaisa Huotarin by cutting and folding the extended paintings, Maria Tanin crocheted Medusat mixed Riikka Keränen Secondary-climbing on the columns of the work and the clay plaster resembling microbial mass invite you to jump and observe.

According to executive director Virkajärvi, the window of Keränen’s white exhibition space was not allowed to be washed because the work explores small worlds that spread over time into human spaces.

Especially lingering in the attic-like corner of the fourth floor, Rosalia Silferin a wide range of works Kitchen arouses the desire to touch. The visitor begins to touch with his eyes, swims his attention on the many surfaces of the works. There are details, colors and familiar little objects beyond the eye’s reach. The clusters of works combine naivety and mischievous maximalism. Shapes and colors do not avoid strong, bodily associations.

On the fourth floor, the door to the roof is open. The factories loom against the silhouette Timo Ahjotulen a massive installation sculpture, MONODRONE:n, tab. On the roof, the work is like a jumpy, tense rush, an impulse.

This summer in Mänttä, the perception is growing and opening up in different directions. Next to it, the visitor can give himself space for things to happen.