KIMMO SARJEDialectic of Avant-garde - montages 15.11.2025 – 14.12.2025
We enter into factual non-objectivity and we fear it sarjasta Avantgarden dialektiikka, 1989-2025
Politics and ideology are part of my artistic imagination. The Soviet Union and Russia have been my special interest for more than 50 years and one of the themes in my art ever since my first exhibition. Major political upheavals and tensions, such as the arms race, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the war in Ukraine, trigger artistic, moral and intellectual evaluations.
My previous exhibition, Russia, Russia, Russia at Gallery Halmetoja (31 January–23 February 2025) examined the Soviet Union during the Era of Stagnation and its opening during Perestroika alongside Russia ruled by Putin, closing up once again, and Ukraine, living in the shadow of the Russian offensive. The oldest works in the partly retrospective exhibition were from 1984.
Dialectic of Avant-Garde continues the themes of my previous exhibition and features both new montages and ones done years ago. The impressions of the avant-garde, the vanguard, in art, politics and war are issues that I juxtapose with the history of the Soviet Union and the contemporary imperialism of Russia, while also exploring Putin’s Eurasian turn. The orange and black stripes in St George’s ribbon – a symbol of war and nationalism – are like bars that dominate the political landscape of Putin’s empire.
In my montages, which consist of photographs, pigment prints, collages and films, Malevich’s philosophical art, Suprematism, parallels the Lenin cult and the doctrine of the Communist Party as a vanguard. Orthodox theology with its iconic art also looms in the background.
In his performances recorded in the 1990s, the late Finnish Marxist philosopher Pertti ‘Lande’ Lindfors (1927–2007) interprets Stalin’s order of the day that the dictator gave on 2 May 1945 when Berlin surrendered. Lindfors’s performances were the starting point for the short film (1995–2025) that I made with film director Kimmo Koskela on the dialectic of war and avant-garde.
The mini opera Nostalgia for the Avant-Garde
(1998–2025), composed and performed by musician Juha Haanperä, is another video
work in which I collaborated with Koskela. The libretto is based on excerpts
from Malevich’s 1924 essay that discusses the cult of Lenin. The fragments are
also the written element of my series of montages Dialectic of Avant-Garde
(1989-2025), which has been updated from Finnish into English and realised with technical collaboration of photographer Petri Kuokka.
Kimmo Sarje
Artist, Adjunct Professor of Aesthetics, art critic
and curator Kimmo Sarje has worked as an artist since 1984. His art addresses
questions of modernism and socialism by means of montages in the spirit of
deconstruction. His works can be found in the collections of several museums
and art foundations, including Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, HAM Helsinki
Art Museum, Amos Rex, EMMA Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Pori Art Museum, Oulu
Art Museum, Finnish State, Heino Art Foundation, Jenny and Antti Wihuri
Foundation as well as in Pekka Halonen’s and other private collections.
