Award winner 2004
Kimmo Schroderus
sBorn 1970 in Jyväskylä, lives in Helsinki.
Kimmo Schroderus is a sculptor, whose arsenal of tools is as extensive as it is possible to be: ranging from a sewing machine to welding equipment. Already at the beginning of the 1990s, he displayed a faith in the power of the men's movement and exposed himself to criticism when he entered into feminist discourse with boyish pranks. He first made a name for himself with his soft-toy-like artist's books and objects rooted in Pop Art. He was also in a performance group, together with Markus Copper, Klaus Martikainen and Kirsi Peltomäki. After the objects, he showed a portrait gallery sewn out of leather. The works took up the identity politics that was very much to the fore at the time: definitions of social and gender sexuality, and themes of seduction, control and subjugation. Also included were mirror-like works that made use of photography. The influences for the subsequent steel and leather sculptures appeared to come from s/m, gothic and leather culture. The works were over-eroticised to the point of comic-book-like exaggeration. Their subject matters emerged in furniture-shaped sculptures. At the end of the 1990s, wood found a place as one of his materials and, at the same time, the works' blatant aggressiveness also appeared to soften.
In his sculptures Schroderus has gone through metamorphoses both on the level of expression and of contentual nuance. The organicness and exaggeration of the latest works, welded out of metal, which came about at the turn of the millennium, can be seen as being influenced by the solemnity and pathos of the baroque or of mannerism. At the same time, the form language of Schroderus' sculptures is totally up to the minute. References bubble up from art movements that have sought a new era, such as the machine aesthetic of futurism, cyborg figures or the shapes of Frank Gehry's architecture. The sculpture Mitä Helvettiä (What the Hell, 2002-03) is like a Bernini-esque angel's wing shaped out of an iron rod. It is as though Metallica were to play barock! From summer 2005 Schroderus' large, several-tonne public sculpture, which carries on the same contemporary baroque tradition, will stand in Helsinki's Tallinnanaukio Square. The undulating steel mass gets a cooling element in the water flowing over it. In 2003, Schroderus was curator of the Mänttä Art Festival, which was on the theme of Sculpture.
Leevi Haapala
Exhibitions
Hämeenlinna Art Museum 28.8.-3.10.2004
Kouvola Art Museum 8.10.-7.11.2004
Joensuu Art Museum 18.11-2004-9.1.2005