TUOMO TUOVINEN

1984 / Tampere / sculpture
www.tuomo.hevosburger.net

If you came straight to my page on this website, good, because I'm going to tell you that it's not worth browsing this website – at least not if you care about art.

I just came from a meeting where we were planning this exhibition. There I realized that throughout my years at the Academy, I have regarded myself as inferior to my classmates, unwittingly envying their ability to use the school's workspaces, demand materials and credits, complete their courses and talk with the professors, while I have continuously felt the need to hide my uncertainty about what I'm actually doing in this school. Suddenly I understood that this only means that the others are better at being students than I am, better adapted to an institutionalized educational setting; the actual art they make has not been a contributing factor to this feeling.


At art school you can learn to be a good student. And succeeding as a cog in the wheels of the newly bureaucratized and branded University of the Arts may indeed foster the impression that you are "doing well" at art school. Art, however, happens quite irrespective of these institutional structures.


I know that there will be fine works from many students in Kuvan Kevät. However, this website will not make those works any better. This site, produced by graphic designers and communications experts, contributes to creating an illusion where institutionalism masquerades as high-end art. It may lead you to assume that the works in the exhibition owe their existence to an institution by the name of The Academy of Fine Arts/ University of the Arts Helsinki. But in reality the works exist in spite of the institution. Creative activity still exists among students.