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poster by Kari Piippo
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ABSOLUTE HUHTAMO
Galleria Sculptor
January 7–26, 2003
Eteläranta 12, 00130 Helsinki
The sculptor Kari Huhtamo celebrates his 60th birthday with two exhibitions.
This month, January 7–26, 2003, Galleria Sculptor displays about a dozen of
his works under the title ABSOLUTE HUHTAMO, and the other show,
RETROSPECTIVE HUHTAMO, will be seen at the Rovaniemi Art Museum, April
4–June 1, 2003. Galleria Sculptor exhibits Huhtamo’s latest works,
constructions of stainless steel. There’s also one sculpture from the late
Sixties, building a bridge towards the more organic productions of his
youth. In connection to this work, an extensive photo collage features
different experiments based on designs and fantasies of those times.
Born in Rovaniemi November 1st, 1943, Kari Huhtamo studied first at the
Central School for Industrial Design in the years 1961–3, then at the
Finnish Art Academy School in 1963–4. He soon proceeded from obsolescent
figurative sculpting towards experiments – characterized by surrealistic and
pop art tendencies – with various materials, and the former figurative forms
gave place to free constructions. In the year 1967, Huhtamo created his
first polished and shiny steel construction, but you may still perceive a
crowing rooster in the silhouette of that work. With the use of steel,
Huhtamo’s art concentrated on geometrical constructions and ready-made
industrial materials. In the spirit of constructivism, he begun to compose
his works from plates, bars, square-formed pipes and wires. The sculptor’s
and artisan’s atelier gave way to machine shop halls, and the sculptor
himself evolved to a designer, comparable to an architect employing many
skilled workers.
Since early Seventies, Kari Huhtamo has been especially known for his big
public works, in which the elegance of polished stainless steel is at its
best. He has constructed dozens of sculptures, reliefs, installations, and
free-hanging mobiles for fronts and entrance halls of public buildings. As
energetic and interested on new technical possibilities as always, Huhtamo
continues to be efficaciously productive in this area. He has begun the
construction of a big public sculpture that has formerly been on display as
a computer designed virtual model.
The perception of a three-dimensional sculpture is always an event connected
to time and space: the work takes its form according to the movements of the
observer – or the mobile’s own movements. Huhtamo’s steel constructions are
heavy works of art, but because of their shiny or painted textures and
apertures cut in the planes they give the delusion of an almost immaterial
weightlessness. Curves and movements are typical for the works; their shapes
often turn to illusions – transforming and fluctuating reflections and
mirror images, lights and shadows. Huhtamo’s steel constructions are
surveyable objects; there’s no need actual need to touch them. With their
accurate and impeccably finished forms, they often create an air of an
aristocratic distance and unsociability, but sometimes even steel seems to
emit humane and intimate sensations.
The ABSOLUTE HUHTAMO exhibition guides its spectators into Kari Huhtamo’s
art which – in spite of seemingly simple solutions – is multidimensional and
multiform. Such topics as the nature, the coming of spring and the
glittering sunshine, melting snows and purling brooks, budding leaves or
fluttering birds can be discussed within a commonly understood frame of
reference – but even for such phenomena Huhtamo seems to give his own
absolute forms.
In due course, even this exhibition will be displayed on the artist’s
homepages: http://www.huhtamo.com
Juha Ilvas
Art historian, Järvenpää
view the exhibition
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