Tuomas Ollikainen / Sculptor / Sculpture

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Kitchen Stories

Nadezhda Mandelstam wrote, in his memoirs about the life in the Soviet Union in the 30's, that the kitchen was the only place where one could speak freely. These four sculptures made of ceramics, wood and soap stone were exhibited in Petrozavodsk in September 2018. The ceramic parts of the pieces also present the most common colours of houses, which I have seen in Russia, just across the Finnish border.

2018

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Antimonument

Antimonument is a small sculpture of bronze and stone. It is installed to Rajatalo, which is an art project created around an abandoned house in Keuruu, Finland. Traditional monuments create around them an aura of 360 degrees, usually of a personified power. Also Antimonument, erected at the edge of a forest, creates its own aura, but of a different kind.

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Olohuone

Olohuone in English translates as "living-room", yet more accurate rendering would be "being-room". The installation was made for the 20th anniversary exhibition of the Art Center Ahjo in Joensuu in April 2018. The theme for the exhibition was "Art Under Construction", and the keywords of the installation were: fermentation, intoxication, simulation, transgression, recreation and incarnation.

2017

25th Century Fisherman-Poet & Bells

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25th Century Fisherman-Poet & Bells
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Bells

Fired clay, wood, metal, bone, soapstone, plastic, red clay, leather, textile

2017
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Bells (night time view)
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25th Century Fisherman-Poet

Fired black clay, transparent glazing, metal

2017
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Methane summer

Metal, wood

2017
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Methane summer

Metal, wood

2017
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Truth is Burning/Returning

Wood, metal, ledropes, solar energy system

2017
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Solar panel
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Truth is Burning/Returning (Night time view)
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After the Flood

Soap stone (sculpture placed inside a pre-existing model of the museum area).

2017
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After the Flood

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Möhkönvirta 2017

Möhkönvirta-contemporary art exhibtion was the big project of the 2017. Besides being an artist in the exhibition, I was also one of the curators and also responsible for the graphic design of all the promotional material. While making the serie of works for the exhibition I was reading a lot of Polish poetry from the periods before and after World War II. As a result, the works have a catastrophic undercurrent in them.

Melt the Image Away to Stop the World from Melting Away (detail)

Kinetic sculpture

2017

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Melt the Image Away to Stop the World from Melting Away (detail)

Kinetic sculpture

2017
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Post Mortem (overview)
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The First Ones & Melt the Image Away to Stop the World from Melting Away
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XXXXXXXL Hero

Textile, paint, metal

2017
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In the Kingdom of the One-eyed, the Blind is a King

Marble, wood

2017
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The First Ones

Prints from colour negative

2017
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The Key Witness

video

2017
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The Ballad of an Old Barrel (detail)

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Post Mortem

Post Mortem was a solo exhibition held in Galleria Kohina in Joensuu (November 2017). The exhibition took a point of view from the future to the present. At the core of the works was the question: How can climate change effect our understanding of crime and law? I wanted to approach the question through dichotomies of individual and common good, security and power, knowledge and information.

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Back to the Future

Placed in the window of the Ikkunagalleria in Joensuu for the last two months of the year, the exhibition Back to the Future presented small wooden sculptures made during six days at the Mustarinda house in the summer of 2017. Also five photos were included, taken with an old Zeiss Ikonta camera, at the Paljakka Nature Reserve in October 2017.

2016

Preparation for a Journey II

Wood, wax, pigments

2015-2016

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Preparation for a Journey II

Wood, wax, pigments

2015-2016
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Five gates (prints by Pirta Ala) & Preparation for a Journey II
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Näky (eng. Vision) & On the Nature of Speech
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Näky (eng. Vision)

Wood, fresh clay, metal, roap, varnish

2016
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On the Nature of Speech

Wood, grains, metal, pigments

2015-2016
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Dream of a House I-III

Wood, red clay

2016
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Pieta (video by Sami Ala) & Dream of a House I-III

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Hagioscope

Group exhibition with artists Sami Ala and Pirta Ala in September 2016 at Taidekeskus Ahjo, Joensuu. Common theme for the exhibition was sacred. The name of my serie of works was Epistemological Cycles.

Becoming (detail)

Spruce

2016

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Becoming (detail)

Spruce

2016
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Seven Invisbile Men (overview)
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My frist trip to the sea was, when I crossed the Mediterranen in a rubberboat (photos by Stelios Andriotis and Tooza Hasairi)

Prints 20 x 20 cm

2016
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Almucantar (detail)

Plaster, wood, light

2016
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The Anthropology of Water

Water from the Mediterranen sea, water from the river Vuoksi, glass bottles

2016
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Seven Invisible Men (overview 2)
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Hope (original drawing by Daniel Tschumi)

Graphite pencil on paper (drawing kept folded in a backpack in daily use, for the duration of four years)

2012-2015
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Guestbook

Wood, paper, inkpad

2016
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Once in Europa (24 min)

2-channel soundtrack, wood

2016

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Seven Invisible Men

Solo exhibition Seven Invisible Men was held in Gallery Taidebunkkeri in May 2016. The main theme of the exhibition was encounter. The gallery is situated right next to a refugee center, where people arrive from Syyria, Afghanistan, Iraq etc. Within the gallery space, raw wood met with concrete, waters from different sources were mixed together, and other encounters occured.

Kiuaskivi

Stone, wood

2016

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Kiuaskivi

Stone, wood

2016
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Pohjolan suuri sauna (overview)
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Portinpäällyspuu

Wood, hampen roap, metal

2016
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Puheenvuoro & Kiuaskivi
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Pohjolan suuri sauna

Wood, cardboard

2016

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Pohjolan suuri sauna

Installation made for Löyly on Henki group exhibition at Louhitalo, Eno in the summer of 2016. The work took its clue from Kalevala, in which the ancient Pohjola is depicted as a notorious northern land ruled by infamous Pohjolan Akka. The installation proposed a more positive and ambigious view on Pohjola.