HARRY KIVIJÄRVI

PRESS RELEASE

Harry Kivijärvi’s sculptures Eukleides (1986–1987, black stone, length approx. 20 m) and Plotinos (1985–1987, black stone, diameter approx. 10 m) appear in many ways to be “close to nature” while simultaneously containing a mystery that only Culture seems to understand. As we begin to explore what might lie “behind” these stones, we must also remember that whenever we say “Nature,” we imply that things should remain as they appear to the eye. Yet, what is left “as is” is always conditioned by some prior interpretation. In nature, what is natural is simply that. What we add to it, however, becomes the focus of interest, peeling away layers of meaning.

Numbers and numerical proportions have, since the earliest urban civilizations, served as a means of demonstrating the rationality of the cosmos. Nature has revealed itself through numerical relationships, with numbers acting as keys to solving the mysteries of the world. Both the forms of the sculptures and their titles gesture toward antiquity. Kivijärvi invites the viewer into a play of meanings, where the stakes are the early fantasies of European scientific culture.

A form is always perceived within a particular field of meaning. The perception of form is influenced not only by the form itself but also by what surrounds it. In modern culture, there has been a strong desire to experience artistic forms directly, without externally imposed meanings. Kivijärvi has stated that humanity inevitably leaves its mark on nature. His starting point is often a clear and systematic, even predictable, form, so much so that “the other side of the sculpture is evident from its sign.” In a sense, Kivijärvi uses geometry to test what acts as the mediating element between the presumed opposition of nature and culture.

Harry Kivijärvi’s large sculptures put our conventional relationship with sculpture to a multifaceted test. To what scale can we perceive an object in a single glance? Spatial relationships communicate silent meanings. However, this does not mean we do not hear them or continuously interpret them. Space speaks specifically to our subconscious, to that which expresses itself in sidelong glances. Awareness of spatial relationships is absorbed into the framework of interpretation before we even notice (i.e., articulate) it. Yet, we do not interpret the spatial relationships of an object solely through the lens of spatial relationships; instead, we translate the language of space into the languages of other cultural meanings. These meanings are not always visual; rather, they are often unspoken.

Spatial relationships, however, are real—in the sense that we, bound to our bodies, navigate under the “terms of space.” Space is present, not “out there somewhere,” even if our thoughts are elsewhere. We cannot banish space from our minds. We become extensions of the sculpture the moment the sculpture becomes an extension of space. In this sense, sculptures are closely allied with architecture, the “mother art.” At their best, they encompass everything else around them. Plato’s premise was that beauty has a mathematical foundation. He contrasted the beauty of living beings with that of the rectangle and the circle. One of Kivijärvi’s central aims, by contrast, is to set mathematically regular forms upon the foundation of the random, unconscious, and multifaceted nature of the natural world.

Here, nature refers specifically to the arbitrary, selected forms of nature. Two traces meet: the trace of geometric form, which leaves no “marks,” and the “blind” trace of nature, represented by the randomly weathered shapes of stones.

(From the exhibition publication “Kivijärvi,” a summary of Altti Kuusamo’s essay “Kivijärvi, Nature, and Geomarks”)

Publications:
ISBN 951-9355-20-0 Harry Kivijärvi
Pori Art Museum 24.4.-22.5.1988
Photographs: Plotinos, 1985-87
Editing: Pori Art Museum
Translation: Roger Luke
100PRINT, Pori 1988

Translated with ChatGPT