The best right now|Tommi Toija’s thick hair has delighted and angered the public both in Finland and Sweden. There’s a good reason for that.
Tein before summer I’m talking about Tommi Toija and his office. The subject of the story was Tommi Toija’s most beloved objects. At the time of writing the story, the contents of his studio were still in the studio at the artist’s home in Lalluka, from where they were going to be brought to the Art Hall the following week for all the people to marvel at.
While dodging countless objects, I wondered how a large family from Liminka was going to survive a trip to an art museum. A child’s hand is fast, the object is fragile and does not express Toijanka’s art.
Apparently, major disasters have been avoided at Taidehalli.
For an interview I prepared myself by reading reviews and stories about the artist’s career, as it should be. I bumped into it by accident to the 2013 news Tojan Bad Bad Boy – about the encounter between the sculpture and the Swedish extreme right. According to Ilta-Sanomi’s story, Toija’s concrete work over eight meters high and weighing 7.5 tons Bad Bad Boy had become the subject of an expression of opinion.
Peeing in the local river Bad Bad Boy was part of Örebro OpenART-exhibition. Since then, it has emptied its bladder at Kauppatori and later in Jätkäsaari in front of a local electronics store.
In Sweden, the nationalist youth association Nordisk Ungdom, linked to the extreme right, announced that the so-called work of art can only be understood as a mockery of the residents of Örebro. They also said that they placed Toija’s photo of a naked boy sculpture under the pee shower.
That made him an artist.
”
I found out I was wrong.
Myself the news about the reaction of the far-right group surprised me. I had thought of Toija’s works mostly as cute balls, sad but harmless. For example, in a sculpture acquired by one of my acquaintances, a ruddy-cheeked boy is blowing soap bubbles. The emotional storm of the Örebro people was a bit like burning their sleeves in Brussels when they saw it Manneki Longest into the lirivan water.
To my own eyes Bad Bad Boykin seemed more like a humorous hooligan than a decadent art that would shake Örebro’s moral foundation.
The Sign of the Storm sculpture is from 2024
At the latest At the Taidehalli exhibition, I found out that I was wrong. In addition to the studio moved from Lalluka, the exhibition includes a couple of Toija’s newer works, so rugged that they would Kalervo Palsan to have nightmares.
In one work, dozens of heads have melted together into a bloody mass. Another has his head full of nails. The third is missing its occiput, and the fourth’s face has faded into nothingness.
Even in front of Toija’s paintings, the most sensitive member of the extended family can have a moment of swallowing.
Sweden’s extreme right saw the matter correctly beforehand.
Toija involves danger, as it should in art.
Tommi Toija: Archeology of emotions 6.10. until. Taidehalli, Nervanderinkatu 3.