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Ca (Temperatures), 2021


Milk paint on wood
Archival inkjet print mounted and framed with museum glass
Cooked and dried oxtail bones
Cooked and dried codfish otoliths
Cooked and dried abalone shells
Found sea shells from Lofoten, Norway
Found seaweed on coral from Lofoten, Norway
Table top flag poles with metal rods and marble bases
Buttermilk on window glass of the gallery
Antique butter containers
Antique aluminium milk churn
Norwegian Rose Marble from Emma Jääskeläinen
Italian travertine from Emma Jääskeläinen
Plaster sculpture casted by Olli Keränen
Printed text


Variable dimensions

 

 


 

 

Got Calcium?
Except on Earth, the Milky Way galaxy doesn't contain any milk. But it sure does have a lot of calcium […] Calcium comes from stars.

From the webpage of Imagine the Universe / NASA


 

Recently I learned that the otolith, an ear bone, in salmon grows as a tree trunk does. It actually records its outwardly expanding growth log daily. According to natural scientists who read its micro patterns, this biomineralization of calcium carbonate is sensitive to how fishes experience their worlds and other factors, such as the salinity of water, food and the location of their habitat, which has different mineral contents depending on the types of rocks on different riverbeds.

I wondered what the pattern would look like during the so-called anthropause – a period of the coronavirus pandemic when the human impact on wildlife is thought to have ‘paused’.

I didn’t know what an otolith looks like, so I searched for images, then I realised that I actually have some at home. Many years ago, I found them at the bottom of a soup dish made with dried cod, sent from my Korean mother-in-law.

I managed to locate them. Warm white, picking up one piece, it seems to be small, but weighing on my palm.

 

….............

 

The exhibition consists of two parts. One is a group of several abstract painting works, made with watercolours, coral and gold, installed in relation to a unique feature of the cellar gallery space.

And the second is a group of images, objects and sculptural elements, assembled into an installation work – Ca (Temperatures) – inspired by the spatiality and the story of the frontal gallery space, which is said to have been a dairy shop, a maitokauppa – well stocked with various milk products that are excellent sources of calcium.

Ca (Temperatures) begins from the front window of the gallery, the glass surface covered with buttermilk as if it were a sign of work in progress, a shoji screen filtering light or the osmotic membrane of an organism, gently protecting the interior from casual glimpses or prejudgements, easily cast from the street, but also allowing the intake of external nutrition for nurturing the works’ psychic landscape, in which those elements of the work may slowly evoke the polyphonic crossings of distanced places, bodies and life cycles.

The title Ca is the chemical symbol of calcium – the 5th most abundant mineral in the Earth's crust as well as in the human body. And its subtitle, Temperatures, suggests the bodies – of every form of life and nonlife, on different scales – in which calcium resides. It also points to the fluctuating states of the bodies and the continuous movements of calcium – the transplantation among and entanglement with those bodies.

 

Shoji Kato


 

Acknowledgement:
Taneli Rautiainen, Lauri Vainio, Maaretta Jaukkuri Foundation, Taru Elfving, Olli Keränen, Emma Jääskeläinen, Insook Moon, Risako Yamanoi, Mikko Kuorinki, Eungyung Kim

The production and exhibition of Ca (Temperatures) is supported by The Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike).