02 Second Skin
03 Bearded Virgin
04 Insect Collection
05 Dialogue
07 Borderlne
08 Reformatory
09 Bodyspace
10 Dialectics of the Surface
12 Pyromania
13 Anti-dualistic Dualism
14 Neon-forest
15 various works
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| NIGHT PORTER, 2007. Black finger-prints on white coat-check numbers (from 1000 persons), steel coat-racks, magnifying glass, installation, variable size, detail. | |
Timo Heino's art comes very close, for within it different and mutually conflicting elements come together in an extremely precise and concrete manner. Charged choices of material bring the viewer to a halt but, in addition, the refined works are boldly open to different associations. Heino deconstructs our expectations of the individual's identity as being unequivocal. His art is based on ambivalence and its analysis in visual form.
Whip Master
For Finnish viewers, the title [in Finnish, Koivuniemen herra, meaning a twitch for punishing children] brings to mind common sayings related to punishment, such as 'to be raised without discipline is to die without honour' in the Finnish tradition or the Biblical classic "He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes." (Proverbs 13:24) Discipline plays an important role in issues of raising children and education: the order of the day, eating hours and corporal punishment are different aspects of the same ideology. At the same time, Heino analyses in his works the bureaucratic violence of society. Whip Master unravels a complex mix where pain and pleasure intermingle. The rubber is like a metaphor separating beings or acts already entwined with each other that are called opposites. Heino demonstrates gently or cruelly that images make us different, standing apart from us in their sameness. His works do not let the wound of subjectivity be shut.
Speed blindness
The umbrella is one of the central ready-mades of surrealist iconography. Heino's Speed Blindness combines the iconic umbrella with even more iconic animal skulls. The basic black everyday umbrella turns into a poetic image, and the animal's dead head appears as a fact. Heino addresses the justification of distinguishing the ready-made from the organic, and analyses the shared life of different material elements. As already stated by André Breton in The Second Surrealist Manifesto, surrealism is a new awareness. Heino interprets this principle repeatedly. He is not satisfied with one or two levels. Instead, in his works ambiguity unequivocally knocks the viewer out. As a viewer, I move in Heino's world all the time in both the sphere of meanings of the material and in the states of meanings of materiality: the umbrella as a black umbrella vs. the umbrella as a black bird.
Night Porter
The work consists of one thousand white coat-check numbers, each one bearing the black fingerprint of a different person. A white lamp with a magnifying glass gives the piece its own tone, as its rays of light create shadows at play on the surface and let the viewer enjoy the individual fingerprints. And as we 'know,' the subject is ultimately reduced to its fingerprints, which squeeze forth a single identity from sketchy parts; the idea of the ink stain being equivalent to the individual still lives on. Night Porter is once again a good example of how in Heino's works undisciplined networks arise from various hints, comments and associations. A good example of this is the title of work, referring to Lili Cavani's film Portiere di Notte (1974), while it can also be taken at the level of metaphor to consider who gathers souls. The answer of course is Saint Peter. But whether Saint Peter is the greatest of all gatekeepers, or whether man created him in his own image, in order to be assured of his own unconflicting essence, remains an open question before this collection of fingerprints.
(c)Juha-Heikki Tihinen