AIR Exhibition locations and works
AIR – the art of breathing in the architecture of breathing
15.5.–1.9.2024
The summer exhibition AIR at Paimio Sanatorium spreads out into the stunning pine forest surrounding the sanatorium, the main building, and the dedicated exhibition space. AIR invites viewers to pause and recharge amidst experiential and tranquil contemporary art. The artworks engage in a dialogue with the iconic modernist architecture and nature.
Sanatorium forest
Josefina Nelimarkka
Atmospheric Un/knowing
Site-sensitive installation
2024
In collaboration with:
Parantolan metsät
Josefina Nelimarkka’s forest installation Atmospheric Un/knowing, situated in the sanatorium’s pine forest, invites the viewer for a meditative walk and performative reading in the forest – to pause and experience the natural world anew – to relocate the internal and external landscape.
The work encourages observation and contemplation of our relationship with the environment. Walking/writing/reading along the path is a novel orientation towards language in relation to the environment, departing from its origins and embracing new possibilities. Through un/knowing, towards unraveling the interconnectivity in the biosphere.
Atmospheric un/knowing links carefully chosen sites in the pine forest surrounding the sanatorium; transparent writings conceal and reveal along the path. Mirrors are also incorporated. While walking/writing/reading, viewers encounter clouds that emerge from the sensitivity of the sky, the physicality of the experience, and the fleeting moment of now.
Operating rooms
Tuomas A. Laitinen
Penelope
Multichannel audio, ultrasonic speakers, stereo sound, objects
Drone by Tuomas Toivonen (recorded 1.5.2024 at Kulttuurisauna, Helsinki).
Voice by Constance Trouve
2024
Like Penelope, who weaves a shroud during the day and unweaves it at night to cunningly buy more time from the 108 suitors yearning for the throne of Ithaca, the sound presented in the work tricks time, creating both an immersive and intimate space.
The words weaving and unweaving are woven into a mesh of sound accompanied by an organic background drone made with a feedback system. Here, time is not presented as a timeline, but a plastic world hum, relative to the space and the specific place. The operating theater becomes a dream space, where sounds create a contact zone blooming between chaos and haunting clarity. Unweaving in the moonlight and weaving in the sun, inhaling, exhaling.
Main building, Patient hall
Santtu Laine
[even] the seven seas
Bioplastic pieces, steel hooks, metal wire, iron cage, a sound installation
240 cm x 180 cm x 180cm
2024
In his practice Santtu Laine is concentrating on reflecting on the ecology of doing and not doing.
The ongoing ecological crisis has made many of us reflect upon our personal impact on the environment. This reflection has also concerned Santtu Laine’s artistic practice and the evaluation of its environmental impact. That’s why he has started a process where he investigate and learn about sustainable ways of making art.
Last year Laine performed nearly one hundred tests with new materials trying different solutions, casting techniques, and moulds as he was looking for ways to control and shape bioplastics made of seaweed. Later he realised that there is no need to strive for absolute control. This sparked an idea of memory hidden within the material and the role of the artist as someone who interprets this memory.
Among other things the process also resulted in the creation of a new installation entitled [even] the seven seas. Laine is forming connections between the memory hidden within the material, the human, and the underwater nature. The installation consists of sculptures made of bioplastics and a spatial audio work. The work is also political: it draws attention to the problems related to the unsustainable exploitation of the underwater forests.
Bunkkeri
Nastja Säde Rönkkö
6 Days Without
installation
2019
Artist Nastja Säde Rönkkö lived six months entirely without the Internet. Everything, from personal to professional communication, navigating a city, socializing and working happened offline. If someone sent her an email, they would get an automatic reply inviting them to either call her, visit her in person, or send a letter.
Rönkkö’s video installation 6 Months Without sit at the intersection of performance art, environmental activism and scientific experiment. At the heart of the project was a space at Somerset House Studios, London where she conducted workshops and seminars. Every aspect of her life in London, from navigating the city to working and socializing, was taken off-line.
***
Pekko Vasantola
Mind data
Laser engraving on plaster, photo copies
2023
Pekko Vasantola processes his own thoughts as data that can be stored, tabulated, visualized, classified and profiled. He recorded his wanderings of consciousness by retreating to a secluded place and speaking his detached thoughts into a tape recorder.
After the recordings, he organized the data in Excel tables by time code and classified them according to variables. Are the mental movements oriented towards the past, the present or the future, are they simple or complex in nature and what kind of feelings or actions are associated with them.. Tables Vasantola engraved with a laser on eight large plasterboards of which five is exhibited in AIR. Based on the thoughts, various computer programs produced eight personality analyzes of the artist.
***
The bunker also exhibits works by the following artists:
Andreas Behn-Eschenburg, Toni Elg, Artor Jesus Inkerö, Eeva Lietonen, Josefina Nelimarkka, Emilia Tanner.