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ANTTI LAITINEN

In the Manila Rope (1957), the novel by Veijo Meri, the grand old man of Finnish literary modernism, the protagonist smuggles a manila rope back home from the front. To make sure that he is not caught and that no one will steel the rope in his sleep, the man asks his mates on the front to coil the rope tightly around his body. The train journey back to Finland takes a long time, and inside the rope the man starts to swell up. His situation gets worse, but the other travellers do not understand his predicament, for the rope prevents him from speaking. Finally the others decide that the man is crazy. At last they arrive at his station. Staggering, the protagonist barely makes it to his front door, where the folks think he has been smitten by some horrible swelling disease. Finally his wife discovers the rope that has eaten into her husband’s flesh, and cuts it off with a knife.

Antti Laitinen’s work shares some of the absurd seriousness of this literary performance of body art. Just as in Meri’s story, so in Laitinen’s works incongruity between an individual’s performance and circumstances grow into a cultural metaphor. Many of Antti Laitinen’s work deal directly with fundamental issues of Finnish identity and cultural imagery, they are pictures of masculinity set in a context of nature and culture. In Bare Necessities (2002) Laitinen explores our romantic notions of nature in this urban age by living for four days in the Finnish national landscape, a forest beside a lake, without any food, water or clothes. The concept – escape from culture into the arms of wilderness – is one of the basic motifs of Finnish identity: the first Finnish novel, Aleksis Kivi’s The Seven Brothers, is a story of seven men who escape into the forest the demand of civilisation. Laitinen’s work is a documented lifestyle experiment, which explores the idea of return to nature in an age of ecological problematics. In the video, we see the artist in all sorts of seemingly comical situations: lighting a fire by rubbing two sticks together, picking up ants for food, fishing with a primitive spear, burrowing in the moss under a tree to sleep. On the other hand, the pristine, poignantly beautiful nature and the artist’s naked body documented in Bare Necessities add a note of innocence and purity to the work, an idea of primal origins we can never return to, but which nevertheless continue to exist on some level. In Laitinen’s treatment, the fundamental issues of avant-garde performance art about the body and authenticity seem to acquire a new freshness.

Untitled (2004) consists of three stones that Laitinen found after digging with a spade first for seven minutes, then for seven hours, and finally for seven days. THis absurd archeological project is umbued with the same ambiguous humour we find in Laitinen's works, the kind of humour that is created when solemnity is combined with vanity, when the small meets the big.

Yet Antti Laitinen is not just a humourist playing around with cultural meanings. His work attest to the presence and attitude of an author who is aware of the tradition of experimental performance art. The artist comments ironically on the canon of body art, such as the esteem provoked by heroic performances pushing the envelope of physical endurance or the transience of performance art. Laitinen's graduation thesis from the Academy of Fine Arts in Finland, Sweat Work and Running Wheel (2002), comprised a running wheel in which the artist ran until he began to sweat. At the end of the performance he pressed an image of his body on a sheet of photographic paper. The "paintings" made with sweat marks remained on the paper for a couple of weeks, until they disappeared. Sweat Work is also a photographic series that records the vanishing traces painted by sweat.

Art and the artist' identity are the topic of Laitinen's Walk the Line (2005-2006) in which he draws his own image onto a city using GPS receiver. The self-portrait is made up of the route traced by Laitinen in the city streets and recorded by the GPS receiver. Laitinen's performances are constructed of a few carefully chosen images. Snowman (2006), a video performance Laitinen made during his residency at the Ujazdowski Centre for Contemporary Art, shows a solemn figure with a carrot for a nose, standing inside a rain of white powder.

In Antti Laitinen’s case, the term work needs be defined with care. Many of his works are actually composed of various stages in the process of its making, when he moves fro one medium and semantic context to the next. The switch produces a new, independent work, which then becomes part of the overall piece. Antti Laitinen likes to give his ideas time to mature. In the final stages of execution, the concept is clear and precise, and the performance is carried out within its carefully chosen context. The show is documented and the record is then processed by the artist to create a new work in a new context, consisting maybe of photographs, videos or objects. A work can thus incorporate different temporal stages. By way of documentation and the switch between media, presence – that quintessential ingredient of performance, the becoming of the work – becomes temporarily independent object, a new presence.

In Finland performance art consolidated its position as an independent art form in the 1980s. Antti Laitinen (b. 1975) belongs to a new generation of authors whose work reappraises the heroic ethos and underlying notions of the artist in performance art. Laitinen’s idiosyncratic approach lends a new perspective as well as a universal dimension of humour to his performances, a humour that arises from a meeting between impossible and incommensurate elements. “Go on, laugh, you’ll be crying yet,” says father to his son in Veijo Meri’s novel – the father who never laughed in his life and considered his rope-smuggling son no laughing matter.

Irmeli Kokko

ANTTI LAITINEN

Born in 1975
Lives and works in Finland.

EDUCATION

Helsinki Art Academy, MA, 2002-04
Turku Arts Academy, Photography, BA, 1998-02
Virrat, Media School/multimedia, 1996-98
Kuusamo Photo School, 1995-96

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

It’s My Island, NETTIE HORN, London, UK, 2008
Exprmntl galerie, Toulouse, France, 2008
Scope New York, USA, 2008
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK, 2005
Rantagalleria, Photography Center, Oulu, 2004-05
Koetila, Helsinki, 2004
Gallery of Arts Academy, Helsinki, Sweat work, 2004
New Image Art Gallery (with Tatu Hiltunen), Los Angeles, USA, 2002
Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art, Turku, 2002

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

Gallery Emil Filla, Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic, 2009
Oulu City Art Museum, 2009
The Rhinelander Contemporary Art Center (CRAC Alsace, France), La position de la Terre, 2008
Espace Croix-Baragnon, Toulouse, France, 2008
Kerava Art Museum, 2008
Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova Museum, Turku, 2008
Gallery Kakelhallen, Mariehamn, Åland, 2007 – 2008
Muu galleria, Helsinki, What is Live Art in Finnish?, 2007 - 2008
then travels to Paris (June 2008) and Helsinki (2008)
Nettie Horn, Beauhemia, 2007
AQUA Art Fair, Miami, USA, 2007
The Brick Lane Gallery, London, ECCE HOMO, 2007
Nuku, Oulu, Nordisk Panorama, 2007
The Brick Lane Gallery, London, Lost & Found, 2007
Kunsthalle Helsinki, 4th Triennal of Finnish Art, 2007
Gallery Signe Vad, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2007
Oulu City Art Museum, 2007
Peri, Turku, Male Stuff, 2007
Kunstverein Bad Salzdetfurth, Bodenburg, Germany, 2007
Rantagalleria, Photography Center, Oulu, What’s Up North, 2006
White Box, New York, USA, 2006
HIAP, Helsinki, 2006
Kunstverein Bad Salzdetfurth, Bodenburg, Germany, 2006
The University gallery, Essex, UK, 2006
Moogie Wonderland, Rochester, UK, Chistmas Absurd, 2006
Helsinki, Katajanokka, Kutsu, 2005
Helsinki City Art Museum, 2005
Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece, 2004
Kunsthalle Helsinki, 2004
Backlight International Triennial, Tampere, 2002
Cultural Center of Hämeenlinna, Virne, 2002
Photography Center of Mikkeli, Virne, 2002
Peri, Photography Center, Pojat, Turku, 2002
Stockholm Art Fair, Stockholm, Sweden, 2002
Peri, Photography Center, Turku, 2001
Tampere Hall, Tampere, 2001
Peri, Photography Center, Turku, 2001
Gallery Hippolyte, Helsinki, 1999

PERFORMANCES

Verbo Performance art festival, Galeria Vermelho, Sao Paulo, Brasil, 2007
Taidepanimo, Lahti, Pair 01, 2007
Szentendre, Danube, Hungary, 2007
Forum Box, Helsinki, 2007
Taidepanimo, Lahti, Pair 02, 2007
White Space Gallery, London, 2006
Kiasma, Helsinki, Ars 06 Performance event , 2006
Circulo De Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain, Jámon-Kinkkua!, 2006
Taidepanimo, Lahti, Pair 01, 2006
City of Toijala, Näkymä, 2006
Anti-festival, Kuopio, 2004
Helsinki Art Academy, 2004
Puskinskaja-10, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2004
Zodiak, Helsinki, (with The Blackroom Act), 2004
Myymälä 2, Forces of Light, Helsinki, 2003
Lábas, Helsinki, 2003
Vapriikki, Backlight, Tampere, 2002
Häme Gallery, Lahti, 2002

RESIDENCIES

Artists’ Associsation of Oulu, Berlin, 2006
Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw,Poland, 2005-2006
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK, 2005