Kimmo Sarje

Basic information

b. 1951, Helsinki

Artist, Critic, Curator

Residence: Helsinki

Contact information

Phone number: +358407576131

Email: sarje@muu.fi

Artist’s Statement

Montage-editing is one of the methodological starting points of my art. My works are built on juxtaposing, destabilizing and shaking up images and ideas. When unmatched pairs of elements meet or collide, meanings begin to shift and become uprooted. Something unexpected arises. I’m inquisitive in terms of material and technique. My works may be collages, paintings, serigraphs, photographs, etchings, drawings, videos, installations or something else. The means are varied and shaped by each project. I often collaborate with colleagues from different fields, including film directors, photographers, graphic artists, musicians and poets. My work also has parallels to essays. My exhibitions are often projects that analyse a specific issue – such as the Soviet system, Alvar Aalto’s modernism or the way of life in Odessa. I approach each problem through images and materials, shaking up concepts.
As an artist, I am self-taught. As a teenager in the 1960s, my sensitivity was stimulated by the punchy montage of Godard’s films and the complicated distortion of the Rolling Stones’ sound, which then mingled with Marxism-Leninism in the 1970s. Writing criticism was my art school. My participation in the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York in the 1980s sharpened my understanding of art, as did my academic studies at the University of Helsinki. I hold a doctoral degree in philosophy and am an Adjunct Professor of Aesthetics.
I have held more than 20 solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions. My works are included in the collections of the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, the Helsinki Art Museum (HAM), the Konstsamfundet association/the Amos Rex Art Museum, the Espoo Museum of Modern Art (EMMA), the Pori Art Museum, Oulu Art Museum, the Finnish State Art Deposit Collection, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, Heino Art Foundation, the Pekka Halonen Collection at the Kuopio Art Museum and the Swanljung Collection at the Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art.

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Works from the artist

Name of the work: Crystal Palace (Odessa)

Name of the work: Potjomkinin portaat (Odessa)

Name of the work: Venäläinen maisema (Pioneerityttö)

Name of the work: Venäläinen maisema (Vihreä paita)

Name of the work: Pietarin samsara 6. VIII 2004

Name of the work: Jää onnellisena! 26.VIII 2004

Name of the work: Abstraction on Nykänen

Name of the work: Circles II sarjasta Abstraction on Ad

Name of the work: Circles VII sarjasta Abstraction on Ad

Name of the work: Circles IV sarjasta Abstraction on Ad

Name of the work: In the Other Side of the Moon, New York -sarja III

Name of the work: Cells 14.5.2005, New York -sarja III

Name of the work: In the Shadow of the Moon 3.6.2005, New York -sarja III

Name of the work: Punainen neliö, New York -sarja II

Name of the work: Moderni, New York -sarja II

Name of the work: Nimetön, New York -sarja II

Name of the work: Piiri sarjasta Sounds from the 60’s

Name of the work: Sade sarjasta Sounds from the 60’s

Name of the work: Päiväkirja sarjasta Sounds from the 60’s

Name of the work: Nimetön (duurissa on kamppailu korkeiden aatteiden puolesta vietävä päätökseen; väri, tämä ihmeellisin kaikista aistielämän tuntemista ilmiöistä; ihmisen etualaa hallitsevat aistien, vain taustaa ajatusmaailman haavekuvat)

Name of the work: Nimetön (Konekivääri on lähietäisyydeltä pirullinen murhatyökalu)

Name of the work: Nimetön (Nietzsche on näyttänyt meille uuden, intellektualismin marttyyriuden

Name of the work: Kannel ja kolme tuolinjalkaa

Name of the work: Formen är ett mysterium I

Name of the work: Soviet Background (Leipä ja rauha)

Name of the work: Kuka pelkää punaista, keltaista ja sinistä

Bio

Visual arts have always been one of my strongest interests, alongside philosophy and architecture. I eventually accepted the free coexistence of my strong interests and inclinations, varying from situation to situation.

I began my public activities in the visual arts field as a critic in 1976, prior to any studies in the field. I grew up surrounded by the arts. My uncle was the architect and visual artist Heimo Riihimäki, while sculptor Aimo Tukiainen was a neighbour. As a teenager, I worked as an assistant at the Tukiainen summer gallery at the Purnu Art Centre in Orivesi, where I met Unto Koistinen, Tuulikki Pietilä and Tove Jansson, among others.

In the 1970s, I majored in practical philosophy at the University of Helsinki’s Faculty of Social Sciences, with the ideas of the Enlightenment as my field of research. I wrote occasionally about the visual arts for publications including the Communist Party newspaper Tiedonantaja and the student magazine Ylioppilaslehti. My circle of friends included many artists, such as Elina Hakaniemi, Tero Kiiskinen, Outi Heiskanen and Jarmo Mäkilä. I spent a decade in the tumult of politics, philosophy and art, including work as editorial secretary of Soihtu, the political-theory magazine of the Socialist Student Union (1978–81).

After earning a master’s degree in social sciences in 1979, I decided to continue my studies in practical philosophy, expanding my field to aesthetics and art history. I focused on the study of romanticism, and at the same time began to take a more professional approach to writing about art. I took courses on colour observation and croquis drawing at the Free Art School in Helsinki. I worked as the editorial secretary of Association of Researchers magazine Tiede & edistys (1981–82) and became an assistant critic for the leading daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat in 1983.

In 1984 I held my first solo exhibition, Kuka pelkää punaista, keltaista ja sinistä? (“Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue?”), at the Old Student House gallery in Helsinki. It included montages in which the American and Soviet sublime were juxtaposed while the threat of nuclear war overshadowed the global political scene. I wrote actively for Taide magazine about romanticism, neo-expressionism and postmodernism, and became a contributor to the Nordic art magazine Siksi in 1986.

In 1986-87, I participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York with teachers such as Richard Armstrong, Craig Owens, Benjamin Buchloh, Ron Clark, David Diao and Barbara Kruger. In Finland, I was one of the pioneers of curatorial practices.

In New York, I also met the Sots artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, who had emigrated from the Soviet Union. Through them, I made contact with the “post-post-conceptualists” of the young generation in Moscow, whose art I curated in Helsinki.

I experienced the Postmodern as a creative challenge. In my writings and exhibitions, the shaking up of the Modern – for example, Alvar Aalto’s design rhetoric – and socialism were central issues.

In order to understand the transformation of contemporary culture, I turned to the study the history of the Modern in the 1990s. My doctoral dissertation, Sigurd Frosteruksen modernin käsite: arkkitehtuuri ja maailmankatsomus (Sigurd Frosterus’ Concept of the Modern: Worldview and Architecture), was published in 2000. That same year, my Gryning (Dawn) exhibition explored Frosterus’ ideas of the Modern movement through montage.

The Enlightenment, the Romantic, the Modern and the Postmodern have been my scientific and artistic challenges, and the Soviet Union and its aftershocks – Russia, Karelia and Ukraine – have been central themes. I have written or edited about 20 books, held more than 20 solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions. My artworks are included in the collections of many major Finnish art museums.