Harri Larjosto: Prilagodljivost / Resilience
Gallery MKC / 7.10. – 21.10.2021.
Exhibition opening: 7.10.2021., 19h
Short-film screenings: 7.10., 14.10.2021., 20h
Gallery opening hours: every day except Sundays and holidays from 2 to 9 p.m.
RESILIENCE
FLEXIBILITY, ELASTICITY, ADAPTABILITY
(According to resilience theory, adaptive and transformative species survive; adaptive, transformative capacity).
Flexibility and adaptability, human, society and nature have been central themes in my work. In nature, resilience is probably a matter of course, in the human mind and actions not so much. Man adapts, succumbs to almost any conditions, but is not flexible in his relationship with nature, easily destroys his environment, the planet. The state, society is guided by economic and political power, coercion and ignorance.
My works are from recent years, the oldest installation Masquerade of ghosts, is from 2013. The main point of this exhibition refers to bees, which I used to keep between 2017 and 2021. Bees are kept for pollination and honey. Many food plants that are important to humankind need insect pollination to produce a crop. Bees, like bumblebees, are farmed on an enormous scale in global food production. The bee has also been colonized as the only species of insect to the industrial food production of mankind.
The relationship between human and animals is evident around beekeeping. The human relationship with the animal is usually absurd. Either it is overflowing with companionship and humanizing, making the pet rise in value to friends and fellow human beings, above all as a place of worship. Or the relationship is disgusting in its industrial cruelty and brutality. Somewhere in the middle ground, caring for animals is for the benefit of all parties. A man always takes and uses more than gives back. In today’s world, it is possible for a person to live in a city without ever encountering nature. Until climate change and pandemics are reminiscent of the existence of nature. Against this context I have created poetic and understanding art.
Harri Larjosto
Biography
Harri Larjosto was born in 1952 in Turku and lives in Vantaa, Finland.
In 1976, he graduated Primary Teacher Educating at the University of Turku (specializing in Visual Arts and Biology). After ten years working as a teacher, he became an independent artist. From 2002 to 2008, he worked as a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki (Aalto University). Harri Larjosto’s first solo exhibition was in 1978. He has made photographs, videos and short films, installations, collages, paintings, conceptual art and performances, a variety of artistic activities related to image and testing the boundaries of art disciplines. He has made several photobooks, writings, aphorisms and poets.
In his art, Larjosto deals with environmental questions and thinking. He is both poetic and absurd, a black humorist. He strives to convey the energy of changing opportunities and perspectives, resilience. The second important theme in his art is a human — nature in man and man as part of nature, a man-made environmental problem. Larjosto combines traditional narration and experimental forms, surprising twists and turns.
Larjosto received the Finland Award 2006, the highest art prize given by state.
In 2017 Larjosto started with beekeeping (ecology and ethology) as a new hobby, and in 2018 photographing bees, which lead to the short movie Beekeeping and mixed photo collages-paintings with poems and aphorisms project Resilience. In 2021, Larjosto has to stop with bees, he got serious allergic reaction to bee venom.
Organizer: MKC Split
Support: Grad Split, Suomen kulttuurirahasto, Oskar Öflunds Stiftelse
Translation and proofreading: Goranka Tomčić
More at www.harrilarjosto.com and https://www.harrilarjosto.com/artist/