Kristoffer Ala-Ketola & AJ Fusco: Innards 13.3. - 13.4.
Kristoffer Ala-Ketola is a multidisciplinary artist from Oulu, Finland who graduated from Yale School of Art with a Master of Fine Arts in 2019. His works have been previously exhibited for example in 4th Ward Project Space in Chicago, Shin Gallery in New York, and Kunsthalle Helsinki, and he has also participated in video screenings at the Helsinki International Film Festival and Video Art Festival Turku. Ala-Ketola’s work engages in recurring themes of human emotion, crisis, and dreaming.
AJ Fusco is an American visual artist based in Helsinki. He is a graduate of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has exhibited in Finland, Ireland, and the United States. Using traditional painting and drawing techniques, his work uses visual indeterminacy to embody the in-between, the queer, and the unclassifiable. Drawing from psychology, biology, film, and experimental literature, his work attempts to speak to experiences that defy articulation through linear narrative or representation.
Both artists explore the dark and qrotesque. Innards is their first duo exhibition.
What are Innards to you in the context of this exhibition?
K: ”The physical innards of a person or something deep hidden mental things. Metaphorically speaking, something abject that oozes out from within… Like maybe it could be a burst of emotion like a sudden feeling of failure, doubt, or indecision. – Maybe a cold you feel in your bones, and a resent that you don’t show.”
AJ: ”Not so much literal guts. More like interiority in an abstract sense, but just as messy and goopy.”
How would you prefer for the audience to look at Innards?
K: ”I like to see it as a diagram or a map for the psyches of two persons intertwining. Maybe it could also be a chain of absurdist associations. I hope the affects of each viewer will guide their reading through their own personal lives.”
AJ: ”I’m not sure—ask me again after we’ve installed the show! ”
What are your current dreams relating to your own work or the art field in general? Have they evolved or changed?
K: ”I dream of money, because having a sustainable life in the art world in Finland is nearly impossible. I dream that people would see art as something intrinsically valuable and not some sort of instrument for society or capitalism.
I feel like I used to be more ambitious about my personal career but I think the realism of life situations have dampened it down a little bit. I guess I would really really want to make a big installation at some point where I would have enough time and would not have to think about money at all, but I know this to be too idealistic.”
AJ: ”Once in a dream I was hanging out with a friend who commented on the cuteness of my dogs, which were running excitedly around my apartment. I explained that they weren’t dogs, that they were in fact very large hedgehogs with soft, dark brown fur instead of spikes. Another time Kristoffer and I were in a throuple with 90s era Antonio Banderas.
In terms of real-life dreams, I’d have to say having a sustainable career making art. It’s not possible as a foreigner living in Finland though.”
Are there any alternative realities that you feel a strong pull to?
K: ”I think we are both very into neuroscience, science fiction and speculative fiction, as well as psychedelic phenomena… These things are at the core of our interests and probably partly the reason why we make art. Art allows us to create and live in alternative realities and invent utopias and utopian thinking.”
AJ: ”I’m very into weird fiction and the absurd—things that don’t make literal sense and cannot be neatly resolved. Joseph McElroy’s novel Plus is a huge inspiration. It’s about a disembodied human brain orbiting Earth in a satellite as part of a science experiment, and attempts to depict novel states of consciousness as the brain mutates and grows new sensory organs.”
What makes you happy?
K: ”Love, friendship, wine, swimming, climbing, video games, candy, cocktails, parties, surprises, and when I don’t have to think about money.”
AJ: ”Making dumb jokes with my friends.”
@kristofferalaketola
@fifteensnakes