Deus Ex Machina
This year, Gallery Halmetoja’s summer exhibition is a solo exhibition by Anssi Kasitonni (a.k.a. Anssi 8000). The exhibition will run longer than usual, starting from June and continuing all the way to August. With the exception of Midsummer, the gallery will be open normally all summer.
Along with sculptures, the 2011 Ars Fennica award-winning Kasitonni will premiere his new short film at the exhibition. Kasitonni’s previous solo exhibition in Helsinki was held at Veikko Halmetoja’s former premises, the ARTag Gallery. One of its most memorable offerings was the video artwork Sakke, since acquired by several museum collections. The film about a snowboarder is pure puppet animation.
The new film premiering in this exhibition, Deus Ex Machina, has a very different mood and emotional charge. It is a combination of live-action fiction and puppet animation. The film is about hunting, both the connection and fatal separation between human and nature. In this wistfully funny film, soundscape plays an important role and Finnish countryside is seen at its most familiar.
The other half of the exhibition is made up of new sculptures. They include bronze, fibreglass and resin pieces. Anssi Kasitonni’s art is largely defined by jubilant contradiction. The subjects of his sculptures link them into the long continuum of Pop Art, but the approach ironizes the polished and edgeless appearance of commercial pop art. The presentation of these pieces is likewise simple.
Kasitonni builds and invents. His world takes the exhibition guest into a rural area – the woodshed attic or the backseat of a car abandoned by a field – to places where you can listen to stories from the older boys. Energy drinks are consumed, The Simpsonsreruns are playing on TV, and everybody is dreaming of Scrooge McDuck’s money bin. Fortunately, burgers can be bought with pocket change.
