Anu Tuominen

The Collection

Anu Tuominen amasses useless stuff like many other people do, it is just that she makes a virtue of it. Famous collections, too, usually have their beginnings in chance, in an obsession that has expanded beyond the bounds of reason until it begins to feel like they might resemble some sort of unified whole, a system. “Previously, when I did this or that, I didn’t always really understand how they could have been made by the same person. But now they are starting to fit together.”

The old items gathered together in Tuominen’s collection have no collectable value, not to mention antique value. An Arabia jug that you find at a flea market might have some collectable value, but a jug with a hole in it has no value at all. That is why Tuominen thinks that this very hole should be put to use, that we should see something in it. Oddly enough, it is virtually impossible to get hold of the objects that are the very most and the very least coveted by collectors.

Meanwhile, the holes in Tuominen’s collection of works are gradually being filled, closed up. The collection is becoming complete, and yet it is unfinished. The collection is spreading into everyday life and merging with it. There is no longer anything especially collectable left. Everything is still as it was, and yet somehow more meaningful than before.

Tuominen would, nevertheless, like to make a museum of all her stuff one day. After all, in principle, a good museum contains as a system all that the world has to offer, it is just that it is all a bit better ordered that the world is.

The Concept

The common conception is that conceptual art does not derive its meaning from handiwork, and that it is thus not often very easy to grasp. In contrast, Tuominen’s works always say directly why they are like they are. You can get a grip on them.

Tuominen’s art contains no secrets to be revealed, no knotty puzzles; although it does have the mystery of insight and transformation. Unlike many other contemporary artworks, hers are self-explanatory. Her works, nevertheless, count as conceptual art, because they do not exist until the moment the idea is grasped: “That is just as if… That could be like that, too. Most definitely.”

Who could say they understand, say a spoon – or art, or that they don’t understand a spoon. There is nothing special to understand about a spoon, or even about art. But the nub of Tuominen’s artwork is still that it is a tool for understanding condensed out of an ordinary object.

Humour

Anu Tuominen does nothing by chance, there is a certain logic to it all. Her art does not exactly exaggerate, splash expression about, leap into the muddy depths or into the transcendental. But it still engages our feelings, since it is funny, humorous. Humorous art has always been a bit difficult to take particularly been a bit difficult to take particularly seriously, as weighty or important art. Humorous art is generally annoying, banal, stupid titillation.

It is amusing that Tuominen’s amusingness or playfulness does not come from joviality, cuteness or joking. Rather, her works are as though involuntarily funny, they have not been tailored for humor. The humor emerges when we understand that the humorist means this, even though they are doing that. We enter into a pleasant conspiracy. Nor is humor ever improved by explaining it to those who don’t get it.

Words

While well-known as a handiwork person, Tuominen is also known as a wordsmith, for her strings of words. A work made with words is also genuine visual art, it conveys an idea to the viewer. Tuominen understands that she can shape her strings of words like stuff, they have to have a certain structure. Words differ from objects in that they are always sequential: a sentence has a head and a tail. That is why arranging stuff is different from designing a sentence, even though the purpose of the sentence is only to say how the stuff can be arranged.

As Tuominen herself puts it: “You can keep control of twenty or so words, when you set them out in different orders twenty or so times.” Writing is conceptual handiwork. A picture of reality and the reality of a picture.