Free magazines! No Past Today & Kuti 16

No Past Today is a brand new magazine in English and Finnish tackling the questions and issues that workers in the art and culture field are confronted with in their local and translocal environments. The magazine offers insider and outsider views on current dynamics that affect the culture system as a whole, and daily life in its details. No Past Today is a true science fiction. Supported by HIAP and Goethe-Institut Finnland.

http://windferreira.blogspot.com


KUTI16 / Summer 2010
Featured artists: Sami Aho (FIN), Marie-Pierre Brunel (FRA),
Manuel Gomez Burns (PERU), Roope Eronen (FIN),
Jyrki Heikkinen (FIN), Helmut Kaplan (AUT),
Yong-Deuk Kwon (KOR), Raine Liimakka (FIN),
Milla Paloniemi (FIN), Kari Sihvonen (FIN),
Edda Strobl (AUT), Mikko Torvinen (FIN),
Ville Vuorenmaa (FIN), Amanda Vähämäki (FIN),
Mikko Väyrynen (FIN) & Emelie Östergren (SWE).

http://www.kutikuti.com/

Spesial Nord Art Magazine

Spesial Nord, art magazine presenting artists from the Nordic countries. The artists in this #2 issue are: Karlotta Blöndal, Laura Wesamaa, Anna Rokka, Andreas Gavell-Mohlin, Viktor Rosdahl, Serina Erfjord, Victor Boullet and Ultra Grön. Editors: Christina Leithe Hansen and Iselin Linstad Hauge.

Graffiti books collection

We have a nice collection of graffiti books on our shelves now! The New York Street Art Coloring Book, Graffiti Tattoo: Kings On Skin etc. and this big one:

Beyond the Street
The 100 Leading Figures in Urban Art

Definitive book on street art featuring 100 key figures from around the world in their own words and images.

Beyond the Street is comprised of interviews with 100 key players in street and urban art from around the world, each of which is richly illustrated with inspiring images. Its impressive list of participants, as well as the unique diversity of their perspectives, makes the book an authoritative manual on these genres. For the first time, this 400-page tome brings together the direct points of view of leading artists and the most important sales outlets for street art as well as key commentators, collectors, and enthusiasts. Combined, these separate and distinct outlooks create a uniquely authentic collective portrait of street and urban art that is captivating, informative and entertaining.

Urban Interventions (Gestalten)

Urban Interventions
Personal Projects in Public Spaces

Evolving from graffiti and street art, urban interventions are the next generation of artwork to hit public space. Using any and all of the components that make up urban landscapes, these mostly spatial works bring art to the masses. They turn the street into a studio, laboratory, club, and gallery and challenge us to rediscover our environment and interact with it in new ways. This is the first book to document these very current, personal art projects in a comprehensive way. It shows the growing connections and interplay of this scene with art, architecture, performance, and installation as it turns public spaces into surprising and provoking individual experiences.

EGS T-shirts & bags

To celebrate the EGS exhibition, Grey Market teamed up with EGS to create a set of collaborative gear. The EGS pack includes a white tee shirt and tote bag featuring black ink EGS piece.

Kotori Kawashima: Mirai-chan

Tokyo-based artist Kotori Kawashima has made a really cute photo book of her daughter Mirai-Chan. We love it. www.kawashimakotori.com

Adios III

Edited by Konsta Ojala, Adios is a an artanthology that embraces wild street art, brutal fanzine culture and art as an alternative way of doing, experiencing and living. Artists: Germes, Mark Kuivanen, Janne Martola, Tommi Musturi, Samu Nyholm, Konsta Ojala, Sauli Sirviö, Timo Vaittinen ja Vilunki3000.

New Flipbooks from FLBLB (FR)

http://www.flblb.com

ARTIST INTERVIEW / Emmi Jormalainen & Reetta Niemensivu

Name: Emmi
 Jormalainen
Age: 30 

I live in: Helsinki 

I work in: Panama Studio in Kallio 

When I grow up I will be: A Cat Lady 

Things I like: bunnies, summer cottages, books
Things, which I do not like: hot weather, beer, evil 

The exhibition soundtrack is: Aksu, Eleanoora Rosenholm, Timo Räisänen 





Describe Reetta's comic book in three words:

Reetta's album is powerful, beautiful and emotional. 



Continue the sentence: I draw comics, because ... 
... It fascinates me how images and words co-create a story 
in the reader's mind. 



Why is it worthwhile to present a comic book at the gallery?
 Since cartoon characters also want to get outside from the book. 






How much does the story in this comic book draw from your own experiences? 
How were you able to empathize with a child's world? 
As a child I moved to a new place, and before I got good friends, I began to write letters. My foreign pen friends always sent cool stickers and photos that were not yet available in Finland.  I learned to draw so I could send them images in return. 
I think it is easier to look back in life than to write about the present moment. 



What are your sources of inspiration?
The comic books are rarely a source of inspiration when making comic books. 
Rather the inspiration comes from, literature, life and the surrounding visual 
culture.



What binds Veera-Anneli and Lempi stories? 
Longing for love and acceptance. 



And what unites Reetta and Emmi? 
We had been school friends for almost 10 years and drawing, 
drawing and drawing. 





Name: Reetta Niemensivu

Age: 30

I live in: Lahti
I work: Evenings 

When I grow up I will be: Veterinarian (Reetta 6 years old) 

Things I like: Un-hurried mornings, objects arranged according to color, stories

Things I don't like: Being in a rush, loud noise, wasps. 

The exhibition soundtrack is: Lonely accordion sounds from the dance pavillion and self recorded worn out c-cassettes. 



Describe Emmi's comic book in three words: 
Fluffy, sweet and sad. 



Continue the sentence: I draw comics, because ... 
... Pictures and words can be combined to tell stories that can not be shared in any other way. 



Why is it worthwhile to present a comic book at the gallery? 
At the gallery our comic book will get a new kind of reader / viewer. In a bookshop the book could get lost among all the other books.






How does the story get played out, it seems that the events described and the people are real? 

With storytelling I have set some limits: the reality-based beginning and end. In between I can improvise. The background material helps to provide inspiration and helps so that there is no need to invent everything from scratch.



What are your sources of inspiration? 
My inspiration comes from the process of working with seen, heard and found treasures.


What's binds Veera-Anneli and Lempi stories? 
Both are made with love. 



And what unites Reetta and Emmi? 
We both have birthdays in September. Maybe all the connecting factors, and similar items of interest can be explained!

Interview: Verna Kuutti
Translation: Edna Nelson

Toshiyuki's Coffee

The popular coffee pots by Toshiyuki Fukuda are available again! Kawaii!

Emmi Jormalainen & Reetta Niemensivu

The debut graphic novels by Emmi & Reetta were published last night at the opening of their exhibition at Napa. Congratulations girls! The books are now available at Napa, check them out.

Furniture Bondage and other rare books

Melanie Bonajo: Furniture Bondage (Kodoji Press)
In literal (and often hilarious) interpretations of women burdened by housework, Dutch artist Melanie Bonajo photographs nude women whose bodies are so encumbered with household junk that they’re reduced to sculptural supports.

ARTIST INTERVIEW / Toshiyuki Fukuda

Name: Toshiyuki "Kappa" Fukuda

Age: 43

Occupation: Illustrator

Hometown: Tokyo

I work in: a studio in Tokyo

Things I like: Walking, feeling playful, vintage shops.

Things I do not like: being idle.





Your paintings have an exciting texture: as if they had been made from recycled paper. What technique you have used to create them?
The works are painted with acrylic paint on canvas, on top of which are distributed paper handkerchiefs. Also on top of the painting, is a surface layer which is a handkerchief. Since the chemical varnishes are awfully strong to me, I varnish the surface with instant coffee, or sometimes even soy sauce. Using this varnish the same new painting begins to give an antique impression. Antique goods are my favorite thing, and one of the largest sources of inspiration.


You have illustrated children's book plate covers and ads, created textiles and tableware designed and painted unique works. Do you see yourself more as a designer, illustrator or artist?
I consider myself first and foremost as an illustrator who tries to fulfill client requirements and exceed their expectations. I also like to create unique products and I like exhibitions, but through my products I can bring creativity into the lives of ordinary people - and encourage them to create something of their own. Art and design should not only be a hobby for wealthy individuals.

What does it mean to you to have an exhibition in Finland?
I would never have imagined having an exhibition in Finland. Finland and Finnish design is of enormous interest to the Japanese: in this way it is a bit of an idealized country for us. I think it is great to see how design in Finland is a natural part of people's everyday lives.

Interview: Verna Kuutti
Translation: Edna Nelson

Painting eggs with Toshiyuki

Thank you for all the painters and visitors on saturday!

Japanese illustration & art books!

www.misatoban.com
www.himaa.cc
www.asmhtr.com
www.noritake.org
www.shiokawaizumi.com

ARTIST INTERVIEW / Hertta Kiiski

Name: Hertta Kiiski

Age: 36

Lives in: Turku, Finland

I Work: nearly always when not in school or playing with the daughters

I think I will grow up to be: a photographer

Things I like: pastéis de nata, diamonds, wool, Monica Fagerholm, old seaside villas, family and friends

Things I dislike: routines

The soundtrack to this exhibition is: Childhood by Beach House & Cemetary Party by Air


What makes Heartta Kiiski panic?


Just about anything. Horror films, of course, but also swimming pools, which are built underground, bubble arenas, sewers, birds, stuffed animals, sleep walking children.






How did you decide to work with images of terror?


There are so many movies that I would like to see, but I know that I can not watch them without being traumatized. For example, Lars von Trier's “Antichrist” attracts me constantly, but I know that I would never get those images out of my head. I saw ”The Shining” by Stanley Kubrick about fifteen years ago, and the bloody hotel room walls and twins in the end of the corridor are still troubling me.



I am interested with the appeal of horror, such as how small details can create a sense of horror. These pictures were born of the memories created by popular culture. Images with something familiar and something indefinable.







An infant, hair, or winding bush mycelium in themselves are not anything terribly horrible. Which photographic methods create horror effects?


I wanted to make images of things that in themselves are not anything awful or scary. I create a framework for these stories in everyday places. The most horrifying is never what we see, but what we don't see. Each story creates its own frightening image in the viewer's mind.





What kind of horror pictures are you drawn to? Why do we seek to see images that are appalling and disgusting?


Louise Bourgeois' spiders, Hieronymus Bosch and Caspar David Friedrich's works have something hypnotic in them. Petros Chrisostomou's photos and Jake & Dinos Chapman's figures give me shivers. Hair and things magnified to an unrealistically large scale always resonate! 

Beauty quickly becomes boring, but horrors interest tends to be longer. And I guess it works as a cathartic purifying effect.






The images of your Horreur exhibition have a kind of serenity and cool aesthetics despite the frightening atmosphere. Can you find beauty in the most extreme splatter images?


Sure, say, Kill Bill is a visually spectacular! But the bloody guts as such do not scare me or touch. Quiet psychological horror is more the unattainable target of my passion. The deranged beauty that has a story to tell.

Interview: Verna Kuutti
Translation: Edna Nelson

Frank Koolen: United Colors of + Faund #5 Dogs

Dutch artist Frank Koolen's book United Colors of. Designed by Bart de Baets.
www.frankkoolen.com



Faund #5 Dogs, A catalogue of 1000 dog images found on the internet by multiple finders. Only 100 copies edition.
www.faund.net/post/248281815/faunddogs

Heidrun Holzfeind: Mexico 68/CU

The two-volume book combines two closely related art projects by Heidrun Holzfeind:

Mexico 68 investigates the impact of the ’68 student movement on Mexican society, politics and culture in general, and on the lives of the participants in particular. Conducted almost forty years after the fact, the 18 interviews with activists offer a diverse range of personal accounts, political and social analysis as well as reflections on the events that took place during that mythic year.

CU, Mexico City, August 2006 is a personal portrait of “Ciudad Universitaria”, the National University’s Mexico City campus. The carefully composed shots of exterior and interior views, architectural details, and eerily unpopulated hallways, class rooms and walkways highlight Holzfeind’s interest in aging modernist structures, the conceptualization of the campus as a modern “city” and the use of functionality in the Mexican modernization project.

www.mexico68.net

We have the card machine!

Finally we take Visa, Mastercard, Electron, all of them! Thanks Edna for posing.

der:die:das:

der:die:das:
is a brandnew monothematic magazine made in Zurich,
which examines items, objects and various „things“ from everyday life,
trying to get to the bottom of their meaning to newly orchestrate them.
Next to their meaning in everyday life the items will be put in an art- and
design-discourse, in order to reveal the bizzare and the established all at once.
www.derdiedas-magazin.com