When getting to know Kylätasku’s (*1979; Tampere, Finland) take on artistic work and on life, one’s attention shifts to two points in specific. These points can be called anachronistic, or even a countercurrent to the zeitgeist.

Firstly, as opposed to the self-referencing and inwardness often associated with contemporary art, Kylätasku boldly reaches for large-scale topics of a human and metaphysical nature. And further, as an antithesis to an atmosphere dampened by postmodern irony, he does not retreat to artificial coolness but instead, deals with life and art with a passion, showing sincere interest towards grand questions. In the history of philosophy and religion, these ultimate questions of life have been entitled perennial, ones that are infinitely recurring, ones without a final answer.

In Kylätasku’s work, the eternal questions lean on metaphysical and human opposites or counterparts, and on their questioning. Spirit and matter, awareness and body, thinking and experience, self and otherness, desire and object of desire, presence and absence, visible and invisible – these life-defining counterparts, and many more, meet one another in Kylätasku’s work, both in form and content.