Peculiar ones magpie toes on the wall of Turku Yliopplastalo A, on the day of their appearance on Thursday of this week, they have time to spew out their opinion.
The student union of the University of Turku (TYY) had already announced that, in honor of its centenary, it was going to commission a mural, i.e. a wall painting, on the wall of the building, which will be done by a visual artist Top Swede. A total of 10,000 euros will be paid for the finished work. The work will reflect hundred years of student life.
However, the person watching the completion of the work was confused.
“Someone had taken a photo of the wall yesterday and shared it on the social media application Jodel. Then it was condemned and criticized there,” laughs the secretary general of TYY Riina Lumme.
It’s easy to laugh at this point, because the green patterns, symbols and letters painted on the white wall surface will not be part of the finished work in any way. It is only a work method that facilitates alignment of the final work.
“We can assure you that the finished work will not look like that under any circumstances.”
On Friday morning, the high wall of Ylioppilastalo A was still dominated by mainly green alignment patterns. After the alignment patterns were painted, a photograph was taken of them.
A photo taken of the alignment patterns was superimposed on the mural that will be on the wall in an image processing program. The resulting image helps the creators of the mural to visualize the proportions of the work and align the figures to their places on the wall of the house.
A mural The painting work started on Thursday.
Already on Friday morning, more and more human figures began to appear on the green hills. The painter Ruotsalainen and his trusted pair of horns were toiling in the upper air Janne Vasama.
The sun was beating down and the pale wall gave off a harsh heat so that the shirt stuck to the skin in an instant. The Swede was still excited. About fifteen meters high, the work is the tallest he has ever done.
“The work is very physical. You have to reach a large area and you have to swing up and down in that booth. At the beginning, the height is dizzying and you have to hold on tightly to the railing. But surprisingly soon you forget about the immediate danger to your life, which you still felt while getting up,” Ruotsalainen says, referring to the personal lift used by the duo.
The personal lift is reserved for ten days, so the work should be completed by Sunday, July 9 at the latest.
Ready in the work, the eye will wander from different human figures to others.
The Swede presents his plan, from which you can count more than fifty characters doing things that students have been doing in Turku all along.
There is history and the present.
“For example, the flag parade on May Day and the torch parade on Independence Day have long traditions in Turku. There are also demonstrations in the work, which connect this moment to the 1970s, when university democracy was fought really hard. The overall culture can also be seen, it came to Turku sometime around the 1980s”, Lumme mentions as examples.
The Swede has not yet had time to give his work a name. These apparently strong people have the name “Kulkijoita”, which, according to Ruotslainen, would describe all the people who have passed through the university’s doors over the course of a hundred years.
The Swede has also painted a lot of crowds in his previous works. He is fascinated by the tensions and relationships between the characters. They can be found, even if the characters do not make any kind of contact with each other at work.
“If there are two characters in the work, there is immediately a story and a rhythm. It’s also about misleading the viewer’s gaze, because the gaze wanders and is constantly looking for new details.”
Such a mural comes ready-made.
In the world and mural art is also a growing form of art in Finland. Murals are commissioned and seen more and more in public places in cities.
“In Central Europe, you already see a lot of them. However, there is a lot of technology here that is worth figuring out before doing anything similar. You have to understand how to scale the picture on the wall in the right proportions and what kind of skills and tools are needed for the job,” says Janne Vasama, who has been very fond of graffiti culture.
While graffiti is usually done with spray paint, murals are mostly done with a roller and brushes.
Topi Ruotsalainen says that the proliferation of murals is not only a good thing.
“Quite a lot of murals are made just for the sake of making them, and their artistic quality is not always quite convincing. More attention could be paid to this, because the murals will always be in a public space.”
The Swede believes that, in the best case, murals increase the value and comfort of his area.
“Then there is also the ever-increasing street art tourism. In Helsinki, it has grown considerably, there are organized street art walks and the like.”
Detail of the plan. On Friday morning, Topi Ruotsalainen started painting the male figure in the poplin jacket and student cap shown in the picture on the left.
At this point, the male figure started to appear in its right place according to the alignment patterns.
Architect by Erik Bryggman Ylioppilastalo A, designed and located near Turku’s universities, was completed in the 1950s. The building currently contains, among other things, student apartments, TYY’s office and a student restaurant. In connection with it, there is also a swimming hall designed by Bryggman.
The Ruotslainen’s work is painted with water-soluble stone wall paint, which Helsinki Urban Art, one of the producers of the work, has acquired under the instructions of the National Museum Agency.
The exterior wall paints last perhaps 10–15 years, and the Ruotsalainen mural on the wall of the Student Hall will last for the same period.
How does it feel when your own work fades away in the coming years?
“Such momentaryness is part of the nature of this sport. However, it raises the documentation of the work to its different value. We describe this process of making accurately with, for example, a drone.”
The duo living in the capital region have time to enjoy Turku’s summer in addition to painting. Even on the first night, the program included art and music.
“Yes, Turku seems to offer quite decent cultural experiences,” the native is delighted.
When the visit to Turku is over, the Swede’s days in the open air will be behind him for a while. The Chart art fair in Copenhagen in August is ahead, where there is still a lot of work to be completed.
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