This blue marble

– and yet it spins

Tag Archives: art


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A fish tale

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Leaning against the wall in the livingroom is a silk-screen print depicting a big fish under a table, its fin poking through the tabletop. The fish resembles a blend of tuna and koi. The work is called “breakfast” and is by a Finnish, up-coming artist called Samuli Heimonen. How it ended up there is a good question. We were on our way to Savonlinna Opera Festival but Art Centre Salmela is art shopping made too easy. Who wouldn’t love spending an afternoon in such a gorgeous setting, and perhaps finishing the spree with a dive into the lake from the swim-house?

The fish may be dead or alive under that table, but it will look good on the wall.

(Art Centre Salmela, Mäntyharju, Finland; July 2013)


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The tip of the iceberg

osloopera-1Hand over heart – did you really utterly love opera the first time you saw one? Did you melt into one hundred little streams of joy, or did you zone out before the end of the first act, when you realized you didn’t understand Italian or German or Hungarian and forgot to buy the libretto? And when it was all over, did you spend an infinity in your seat while the rest of the theater demanded four bows and fifteen minutes of ovation before you were finally allowed to leave?

Halfway into my third opera, gritting teeth, I remember realizing that the story is the tip of the iceberg. I let go, allowing the music to wash over me, and focused on the details: the intricate weave of notes, the gorgeous and creative stage set-up, the impossible notes sung by the coloratura soprano, and the way the conductor channeled another world through his body. An opera is not to be understood, it is to be felt. And sometimes, just sometimes, an opera house that allows you to walk all over it lowers the treshold – literally.

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(Opera house, Oslo, Norway; April 2013)


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Parallel worlds; or Saturday afternoon, 2 pm

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One Saturday I found myself walking away from the spring sunlight into a dark maze of living pictures. Room after room offered stories displayed on all walls, voices spiraling down from the ceiling. Fishermen fighting the waves at sea, a woman mourning the loss of her dog, and Death paying a breakfast visit.

So many random thoughts swam in the air, intertwined by voices and moving impressions of our beautiful ruthless wonderful world.

Suddenly I stood in front of a most magnificent spruce growing sideways in the dark, its branches whooshing in the wind. How strange to think of all little lives gone by during the lifetime of a single tree. Which is larger than life, then; our sorrows and loves or the sole existence of an ancient tree?

And I walked back into the sunlight feeling very small.

(Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s collected film works at Kiasma museum of contemporary art; Helsinki, Finland, April 2013)


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The skinned saint

skinlessman Milan

Saint Bartholomew was one of the twelve apostles of Jesus, and the story goes he was skinned alive. With a sensation that something was clearly wrong, I stared at this statue for quite a few minutes before realizing that he was not wearing his skin – he was carrying it wrapped around his arms – holding his hand in the most gruesome way possible.

(In the Duomo, Milan, Italy; March 2013)