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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| PIMENTOLA, 1991. Birch-bark, Plexiglas, 60 cm x 85 cm, Collection of Pori Art Museum. | |
In many of his works, Timo Heino has emphasized a sort of democracy of materials. In the works of his first private exhibition in 1991, he interspaced natural materials such as bark, fur and beeswax with brightly coloured strips of Plexiglas in a strictly geometrical rectangle. For example, in the works Pimentola (the place of the dead in the Finnish mythology) and Raatajakansan alttari ('The Altar of the Toiling People'), which belong to the collections of Pori Art Museum, green and red rods of Plexiglas are accompanied by birch-bark and pine.
On a surface level, the juxtapositioning of industrially produced plastic and natural materials illustrates the tension between culture and nature, the artificial and the original. To Heino, however, the name of the exhibition, Kadonneen metsän keskellä ('In the Middle of the Disappeared Forest'), implies a clear double meaning. Ethylene, one of the components of acrylic plastic, is organic in its origin. It is a hydrocarbon, derived from the refinement of oil. Thus, the materials from the Finnish forests in the works of the exhibition are juxtaposed with prehistoric forests, distilled over millions of years as oil and present in the Plexiglas.
(c) Marja Jalava