Pilons
Pekka Harni, Pilons
Artwork is often composed of many elements. Mainly, these elements are fixed together in the final order.
We are not allowed to change the order of its elements; after the work is finished, it is ready and final.
In my installation, I wanted to turn this fact upside down. I created 12 simple ceramic elements in vase-like shapes, made of red clay. All these elements can be combined in various orders to create different pylon compositions. The user, or owner, of this artwork is allowed to change the order of this pylon composition, to renew the work. These pylons are interactive, at least theoretically.
Because of my profession as an architect and industrial designer I am used to applying function to artefacts and I am almost unable to create pure artwork, without any side-functional or utilitarian aspects. Function does not eliminate the art, although art mainly eliminates or transforms the function.
All the ceramic elements used for my pylon compositions are traditional and very useful pot-like shapes, but also modular. It was also a natural solution to use a local ceramic master, red clay and traditional working methods to create these pylon elements. It was a great experience working with a skilful ceramic master, Marco Tortarolo, from Albisola.
In old times, food was often stored in ceramic containers, like vases and pots.
A stomach: an organ resembling a sac in which food is mixed and partially digested is also a container.
I associate these different pylon shapes to some stomach problems, when we eat too much food.
Allegoric to the digestion problems, it can be understood as an expression of our present society, which is consuming, eating, and using much too much of the planet Earth’s resources.
And finally, I would like to re-functionalise these ceramic pylons by making a water fountain out of these pylons in some nice Italian garden.
Pekka Harni
Pekka Harni, Pilons. “Pekka Harni & Yuka Takahashi exhibition”, Design Museum, Helsinki, 2010
Pilons by Pekka Harni was prototyped in Albisola (Italy) in 2006 during the 3rd Biennial of Ceramics in Contemporary Art and was also presented at the exhibition “Pekka Harni & Yuka Takahashi exhibition”, Design Museum, Helsinki (Finland), 2011.
Planet B
Pekka Harni, Planet B
Pekka Harni’s vase is shaped like an ultra-shiny space station and also evokes the small symbolic flower receptacles of traditional Ikebana. The project actually creates an Ikebana on the cusp between the past and present, between nature and artifice, in which the flowers are the inhabitants of this organic station of the future.
Pekka Harni, Planet B. “Pekka Harni & Yuka Takahashi Exhibition”, Case Gallery Oyamacho, Tokyo, 2012
Pekka Harni, Planet B. “Hirameki”, Ozone Living Design Center, Tokyo, 2010
Pekka Harni, Planet B. “Straightforward New Finninsh Design 2010”, Meatpacking District, Finnish Cultural Institute, New York, 2010
Planet B by Pekka Harni was prototyped in Albisola (Italy) on occasion of the travelling exhibition “Changing the world with a vase of flowers”, MUDAC-Museum of Design and Contemporary Applied Arts, Lausanne, 2011; Pierluigi and Natalina Remotti Foundation-City of Camogli, 2010-2011; Italian Cultural Institute of Madrid-Italian Embassy in Spain, 2010.
Planet B was also presented at the following exhibitions: “Pekka Harni & Yuka Takahashi Exhibition”, Case Gallery Oyamacho, Tokyo, 2012; “Pekka Harni & Yuka Takahashi exhibition”, Design Museum, Helsinki, 2011; Ozone Living Design Center, Tokyo nel 2010; “Straightforward New Finninsh Design 2010”, Meatpacking District, Finnish Cultural Institute, New York, 2010.
