Composer Franz Liszt (1811-1886) joined the Franciscan mendicant brotherhood in 1857, and eight years later received lower Catholic priestly ordination. After retreating to Rome, Liszt also met Pope Pius IX, who is said to have encouraged him: “Go and confess your sins on the piano”. After reading this prompt, it immediately turned in my mind into the form ”Go and confess your sins to the painting”, that is, the form in which I myself acted.

In its original meaning, sin meant breaking away from the connection with God. In Christian churches, the divine service includes a general confession of sins and is followed by a general absolution. In the Orthodox and Catholic churches, private confessions of sins are used, followed by the absolution, but it requires the confessor to repent of her/his sins. Absolution focuses on the church member’s own shortcomings and mistakes, and how she/he can grow into a better person. The secular world lacks this stucture of absolution, which aims at recognizing and correcting one’s own mistakes and faults, asking for and receiving forgiveness.

Everything good and bad from me is transfered to the painting, because we are all children of light and darkness. We are mixtures of good and evil. We are given free will, but the most important thing is to strive towards the light. It doesn’t always work out and stumbles happen now and then, and we can’t help but to get up again and continue the journey. The journey is more important than the end result in this world of homelessness, where we are only guests. However, everything ends at home, in the light of love, and the world forgets us.

I did a suitcase exhibition in Ortenberg, Germany and first traveled by train from Oberhessen to Berlin and from Berlin I flew to Helsinki with the works and from Helsinki I took the train again to Hämeenlinna. My exhibition reflects traveling, reflections of myself and the world, thoughts and confusions flying by, which I don’t always know what they mean or where they are going. Each exhibition is an interim account of a journey that continues. We don’t get ready, except when we’re already in the grave, as our late sculpture professor Radoslav Gryta (1955-2023) told us at the beginning of the course in the first fall of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1992.

Welcome to see the productions of the capricious eye at Taidehalli Häme 26.8.-19.9.2023.

Thanks to TAIKE for supporting my work.

Jukka Korkeila, in Glauburg-Stockheim, on the memorial day of Christina of Bolsena (193‒211) 24 July 2023.

Jukka Korkeila (b. 1968 in Hämeenlinna, works in Glauburg-Stockheim, Berlin and Helsinki) has studied architecture at the University of Technology, Espoo in 1988-90, interior and furniture design at the University of Industrial Arts in 1990-92 and visual arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki in 1992-97. Master of Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Department of Painting in 2002. He was a senior lecturer of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki from 2004 to 2009. State Prize for Visual Arts 2019. Korkeila’s work is currently also on display at Kiasma’s Dreamy exhibition (-> 26.11.) and Helsinki Contemporary (-> 10.9.).

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