Katja Tukiainen
galleria Bakeliittibambi, Rikhardinkatu 1, 00130 Helsinki
open tu-fri 11-17.00, sat-sun 12-16.00
17.10.- 5.11.2006
"Monument Valley", oil and pencil on board, 120 x 120 cm, Katja Tukiainen 2006
"King of the cowboys", oil and pencil on board, 120 x 120 cm, Katja Tukiainen 2006
"Hoh River Valley", oil and pencil on board, 44,5 x 40 cm, Katja Tukiainen 2006
"Miss Rodeo", oil and pencil on board, 44,5 x 40 cm, Katja Tukiainen 2006
"Lahore", oil and pencil on board, 61 x 48,5 cm, Katja Tukiainen 2006
"Mustangs", oil and pencil on board, 21 x 100 cm, Katja Tukiainen 2006 (private collection)
"Cadillac ladies love to play chauffeur", oil and pencil on board, 100 x 100 cm, Katja Tukiainen 2006 (private collection)
"Gand Canyon I", oil and pencil on board, 100 x 150 cm, Katja Tukiainen 2006
"Wanted", oil and pencil on board, 44,5 x 40 cm, Katja Tukiainen 2006
"Primrose", oil and pencil on board, 100 x 150 cm, Katja Tukiainen 2006
"Alcatraz II", oil and pencil on board, 100 x 150 cm, Katja Tukiainen 2006
During the years the United States' foreign policy brought me to a point where I couldn't say I liked anything American. Popular culture too shallow, people too beautiful, people too fat, food too unhealthy, food too healthy and packages too big. I liked New York, though. But it doesn't count since the real America is always somewhere deeper. My lack of liking the people and the geographical area - far beyond the foreign policy - began to interest me so much that I decided to face the enemy.
I planned the trip, checked the routes, studied the guide books, looked through the picture books, read travel accounts by strangers and watched their photos. Now I know that Grand Canyon has to be seen at sunrise, that one has to buy a white cowboy hat and drive from coast to coast in a Ranch Wagon with automatic transmission and, preferably, with a colour of sunset.
"Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated. Admittedly, there is the primal shock of the deserts and the dazzle of California, but when this is gone, the secondary brilliance of the journey begins, that of the excessive, pitiless distance, the infinity of anonymous faces and distances."
Jean Baudrillard, America, trans. Chris Turner, 1988
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