ENTROTOPIA

TEEMU KORPELA - "Art is a gateway to the possibilities of mind." 

You studied at Academy of fine arts in Helsinki where you got MA degree. What was your main interest there? Did you try to combine paintings and spatial installations during your studies or it came later, after school? 

I first graduated from Polytechnic of South Carelia. I was strongly interested about classical and contemporary realistic painting. I studied a lot with teachers from St. Petersburg Art Academy. At the same time I was interested creating spaces and combining paintings with 3 dimensional things. But it was all very intuitive at that point, I did not have much of a theoretical base for doing that.Later I started doing installations with the painting because I went in to crisis with conventional 2 dimensional paintings. I did not have any clue anymore how that kind of paintings should be done. I felt that I'm just repeating historical and contemporary aesthetic memes, and the whole concept of "free expression" lost its meaning because I felt I did not have any of that in me. I got over that by exepting that the romantic authenticity does not exist, and I started thinking about the meanings and values artists have repeatedly contemplated in their works through out the history.


What inspires you most and how could you describe process of making your artworks? 

My works are created in a process where I think about the relation between my experiences and the world. I get inspired by anything that opens reasons to why I experience the things the way I do. The inspiration comes from philosophy and wide range of different sciences but also any other thing that I feel that links in to the things that I'm interested about. I get inspired by visual things that I feel that they manifest certain human conditions. I also get inspired by the effects that the phenomenons that I encounter create in my psychic life. In a lot of ways that is what I do: I give visual form and frames to my inner life to make sense of it. The motivation for this thinking comes from the need to understand the base of the emotions that dictate my actions in this world. The thinking that happens trough the work is personal, and they can't solve the world relation for anybody else. That being said, the world that creates the experiences is shared, as are the visual elements that I use to give form for the experiences, and that's why they have a chance to spark an interest also for the audience to contemplate the base of their own experiences.


Is there any urgent voice what drives you in creation? What questions arise from you work? 

The urgent voice that drives my work is In coming to terms with the feeling of ending that seems to float In the air. Feelings of ending of an era, political systems, ways of life etc. The overal changing of the point of view towards ourselves as beings and where we are existing. Our planet feels so small all of the sudden. Any situation where you feel that you are running out of time provides you with a sobering moment of clarity. The feeling is full of regret but its also full of determined energy. All of the sudden you know what you want, what's important and what is irrelevant. It's a moment of inventory. In my works it shows as themes of smallness, not knowing and human ways to engage with the unknown. 


What does Entrotopia means to you?  

Entrotopia for me means breaking down into something that is yet unknown. I don't know if art can answer where we are going, but what I know about neuroscience is that art and fiction are things humans need in order to develop capacity for imagining. Without capacity to imagine impossible things there would not be science. Art is a gateway to the possibilities of mind.


Where do you think is your work heading? And how your thinking has changed over the years?  

My work is going away from the aesthetics of resent contemporary art. I find myself looking at anything "unfashionable". I find the center topics in contemporary art very important, but the  issues that are being discussed through artistic work are starting to cover under the popular forms. This is very normal. Every ism and visual tradition starts as a comment to some urgent issue in the society or world, but at some point the visual elements become empty symbols, where the artistic work does not really encage with the original goal or meaning. Works start to  refer only  to the aesthetic fashion, not to the original reason and concept. That's when I feel there is a need for some new angle to shake the audience to think what they are seeing. "Aesthetics of the time" become very fast so familiar that they don't challenge the viewer to think. When you get the feeling that the work fits into the conception what art should be at this time, it has become a product that provides you with a comfortable pleasure, not any kind of chance to challenge the contents of your mind. I'm not talking about inventing some unseen forms of art, just using different metaphors and symbols. But like anybody else, I'm quite trapped with what I already know and to the contemporary codes of art. It's a tricky thing to contribute to the discussion of your time without being part of the visual zeitgeist. It will be interesting to see will I manage to do that, or will I be just talking to myself.


What is your not yet achieved goal in exhibiting your work? 

The goal that I haven't achieved is using my full potential. There's only certain amount of chances during your lifetime that you have the possibility to do work and exhibit it, and I feel that I have yet failed to do something that I could say that I could not have absolutely done it any better. Some things are off course out of your hands. You work with the resources that you have and many times it's just not enough or your skill set is not in the level of your vision. My goal is the one perfect show. Which is a impossible goal. Hah!

http://www.teemukorpela.org/