Jesse Avdeikov, Veikko Björk, Valtteri Kivelä, Linda Roschier ja Pauliina Turakka Purhonen :
Stars and Wormholes

Jesse: 
I open the studio door and immediately feel that so much is happening here. This is our place: here, potatoes grow in a backpack and my jungle thrives. Here, I’ve cried and laughed. Sometimes dogs and birds roam the space, along with fabric scraps, wood chips, and sanding dust. Threads travel in socks from one room to another; things and thoughts spread from one person to the next. I accidentally catch a glimpse of the corner of a painting—I don’t remember what it showed, but my brain still recorded part of it. The entire space is a kind of incubator for art, a universe of its own where information stretches out and penetrates everything. Half a sentence lingers on the edge of an ear. A fire kindled six months ago suddenly blazes in my painting. Sometimes I run, and then I sew again. From extremes to infinity, from the small to the immense. I don’t always know what art is, but it happens here. 

We reflect on how living and working together affects each of our artistic practices. Thoughts and ideas unfold through conversations and encounters, but also through the materials, colors, moods, scents, and sounds we encounter—they all seep into our working processes. Most of all, we are influenced by each other’s works, whether we want to be or not. 
Our exhibition at HAA Gallery is one response to this reflection. It features works by all five of us—paintings, sculptures, thread paintings, and patchworks created in this very studio over the past couple of years. Parallels emerge—from small details, stars and birds in individual works, to larger constellations—across the whole group of artists. Stars and wormholes are windows into the universe that winds its way through the studio, where each of us lives an independent life as part of it—and yet—remains dependent on and shaped by the whole. 
 
Linda: 
The shapes of an apple and a heart are surprisingly similar. 
I’ve seen the scribbles of a worm inside an apple—what kind of novel might that be? In the garden, the power of seeds becomes clear. Dried, often modest-looking specks sprout over the summer and transform everything around them, from earth to sky. 
Paintings are similar: in painting, colors and impressions entwine like tendrils. Seeds paint the landscape. 

Veikko: 
In ancient times, people believed that when a person died, their soul would fly to the sky as a bird, becoming part of the Milky Way. 
According to current knowledge, when we die, we break down into elements and return to the cycle of nature. 
I carve birds from wood—willow tits, goldfinches. I think that when I die, some atom of me will be part of a willow tit. 

Pauliina: 
I clear a path through the thicket and arrive by evening at a house whose windows glow with golden light. I open the door, and from the threshold I see two women—one old, one young. I myself am as I am now—somewhere in between. 
I go down to the shore; I want to see the stars. They shine large and bright above the sea. The land ends here. I stand on the last shore. 
Almost daily I come to the studio. It feels homey—there’s an espresso maker in the kitchen, a couple of pots. On the couch, we chat about this and that. And yet, the studio is also on the edge of the world I know. It’s a place where one can safely gaze out at a boundless sea. 

Valtteri: 
I think about all the spheres contained within the works lying around the studio. I think of the prisoner in Wu Tao-Tzu’s story, who painted a landscape on the wall of his cell, clapped his hands three times, stepped into the painting, and vanished—far beyond the reach of his guards. 
I think about a hole you can jump into—and then what? Yes. Doesn’t the hole disappear afterward, leaving only the edges behind? A new reality is born. 
The studio door bangs shut. Someone is dragging their things down the hallway. 
I think about how hard it is to come up with a subject when you try to think of one—but how easily it appears once you simply start. In that sense, the painting creates itself.