Miikka Vaskola
Infinite Numbers of Tomorrow

27.10. - 26.11.2023

“After all, the thought of endless tomorrows stretching on forever is bewildering and yet also rather beautiful.” – Miikka Vaskola

Miikka Vaskola’s approach to painting is similar to the way he perceives the passage of time: “Tomorrow isn’t just a certain day in the future, but an eternal canvas that is constantly being shaped by the paths we take and the choices we make today.” The abstract paintings and free-form sculptures featured in Infinite Numbers of Tomorrow – Vaskola’s forthcoming exhibition to be presented at Helsinki Contemporary in October and November – came together gradually through an evolving series of repeated actions within the organic continuum of his process.   

Vaskola describes his method as a form of archaeology, a process of stratigraphic excavation into layers of time. By digging into familiar soil, he invariably discovers something new, deepening his understanding of his own process. Searching, combining and experimenting with new materials and techniques is another hallmark of his method. Through his sculptures and paintings, Vaskola seeks to unearth forms and expressions that challenge entrenched assumptions about what is natural and what is artificial.

Infinite Numbers of Tomorrow is built around a set of diptychs juxtaposing landscapes and maps. The paired images are conflated, yet without either being subordinated by the other. They are composed in such a way as to guide our gaze from the bottom to the top, from near to far, transforming the viewing experience into an event similar to reading a map. How we interpret what we see is determined by the imagined distance between ourselves and the object. Vaskola’s paintings have a well-nigh archaic quality – they seem to offer a glimpse of something ancient and eternal.

The title of the diptych Haru (2023) refers to the outer archipelago, an out-of-the-way place that is dear to the artist. For Vaskola, paddling an unsteady kayak to the remote island and gazing across the waves towards the distant horizon is the perfect way of living in the moment and absorbing everything around him. A sea kayaker must read the waves tirelessly; as one paddles, the perspective keeps changing ceaselessly. “When you glide past 3,000-million-year-old cliffs, you find yourself thinking about prehistoric timespans that you cannot fathom, but which nevertheless exist.”

In his most recent paintings, natural formations and human traces on the landscape are blended together, as they are on a map. The gestures imprinted on the canvas recall the shapes of ice-age meltwater basins, dune fields, mountain ranges or rainswept cliffs. By toggling our perspective, we might see either an aerial view of forest topography or a map of the seabed. The paintings are accented by metallic shades of bronze and copper, as well as earthy ochre and terracotta, patinated and oxidized by the passage of time.

Also featured in the exhibition are Vaskola’s “unearthings”, in which he employs his signature method of combining diverse materials. He collects different timber varieties from the forest and casts them in plaster and resin to create sculptural objects. “My sculptures were inspired by the achievements of modern geology and technology. The result is a grotesque hybrid of the natural and the synthetic.”

Miikka Vaskola (b. 1975) is a Helsinki-based artist who graduated from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2008. He is known for paintings and sculptures that straddle the borderlands between the organic, natural and cultural worlds in both their form and choice of materials. Vaskola has presented his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Finland and abroad, most recently in the Handle with Care group exhibition at Turku Art Museum (2023), at Akureyri Art Museum in Iceland (2022), Norrtälje Konsthall in Sweden (2022), Berg Contemporary in Iceland (2019), as part of the Hydra School Projects on the Greek island of Hydra (2019) and at EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art (2018). His previous solo exhibition at Helsinki Contemporary, Shore to Shore, was in autumn 2020. Vaskola’s work is found in numerous major private and public collections, including HAM Helsinki Art Museum, Turku Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, EMMA - Espoo Museum of Modern Art, the Heino Collection and the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation Collection. We would like to express our thanks to the Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike) and the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland for supporting the artist’s work.