Palavat tornit

de Timo Valjakka

Kouvola Art Museum Poikilo's summer exhibition Burning Towers brings visitors back to the tumultuous 1980s, to a time when Finnish art became free, more varied and more international. The exhibition offers a view into the art of that decade: paintings, graphics, sculptures, photography and video. Young artists ignored the political dogmatism of the 1970s and threw themselves with unprecedented gusto into both the history of art and subjective feelings and experiences, and abandoned the intellectuality of conceptual art and minimalism. Another new aspect was the forceful emergence of female artists. Of course there were strong men as well ? many of them were sculptors or artist of the older generation who were given a new wind by the 1980s. The exhibition has been curated by art critic Timo Valjakka, whose active career as an artist spans the 1980s. Exhibition: Kouvola Art Museums, Poikilo, Finland (19.05.-04.09.2016).