IC-98

Serlachius Headquarters

20.03.2027

—16.01.2028

Sparks in the Black Night

The works of art collective IC-98, formed by Visa Suonpää and Patrik Söderlund, generate site-specific experiences, unifying rituals, and alternative ecological understanding. They propose models that challenge the human-centred worldview and take into account the interdependence of living and non-living nature.

The exhibition combines a retrospective and a prospective dimension: it returns to the past in order to orient itself towards the future. This highlights the long-term role of art as a catalyst for social and ecological change.

The result is an exhibition that fills Serlachius Headquarters. It also includes a future-oriented plan for long-term, site-specific projects, which will be initiated in the exhibition and implemented later in stages.

The first floor of Serlachius Headquarters will display key works from IC-98’s production of recent years. Included are, for example, Omnia Mutantur (2018), Lands of Treasure (2021/2022) and Impivaara (2024) as well as documentary review works on certain site-specific projects, such as House of Khronos (2016), located in the municipality of Pöytyä.

On the floor below, IC-98 presents its upcoming projects, to be implemented in 2028–2037. They are therefore, exceptionally, being presented to the public during their planning phase.

One of exhibition’s main works is the site-specific installation Gilgamesh (2027), created for the historic management rooms of the Serlachius company’s headquarters. The installation draws parallels between the operations of the Finnish forest industry company and the endeavours of the main character of the Sumerian epic. At the heart of both stories is the felling of forests, the building of worlds, and the pursuit of immortality.

Many of the new works in the exhibition are related to Mänttä and the Serlachius company. Fallen (2027) is a project whose raw material is a forest felled in Vilppula, near Mänttä, a few months before the exhibition’s opening.

At IC-98’s request, the museum collected wood and other logging by-products from the forest, which have been used in this and many other new works as well as in the exhibition architecture. The Fallen project thus permeates the exhibition both materially and conceptually.

A new work, Mänttä Castle Matron (2027), is dedicated to the historic Pirtutehdas (Spirit Factory) in Mänttä. In the hands of IC-98, the derelict factory is transformed into a monument and a temple to a new kind of relationship with nature, conveying an alternative narrative about forest wealth by allowing the genetic heirs of felled trees to reclaim human structures.

In IC-98’s view, Mänttä can be considered the capital of Finnish resource peripheries: “The Serlachius company’s headquarters, where our exhibition will be held, epitomises the history of the Finnish forest industry, the use of natural resources, and the declining civilised and welfare state. The subject of the exhibition is also Mänttä itself, and the goal is to recontextualize and assemble an entire town around an alternative, future-oriented myth.”

As part of the exhibition, artworks from the Serlachius collection will also be on display. The exhibition encourages visitors to view the architecture of the Serlachius Headquarters and the art associated with it through a lens that captures the way the historic forest industry company understands its environment.  

The exhibition is curated by Pauli Sivonen, Director of Serlachius.

IC-98

IC-98 is an artist group, founded in Turku in 1998, whose members are Visa Suonpää (born 1968) and Patrik Söderlund (born 1974). The group often collaborates with researchers and other artists. Its works are both research and social and ecological advocacy – solution-oriented poetics in which visual art is the chosen medium.

The works take place at the intersections of time, history, society, philosophy, rituals, corporeality, and architecture. Media include text, drawings, animation, film, sound, installations, sculptures, interventions and site-specific commissions. The work is serial. As the artists’ conceptual thinking develops, the works intertwine and lead to new ideas.

The Alfred Kordelin Foundation has supported the artists’ work and the exhibition.

Photo above: IC-98, Impivaara, 2024, still photograph from the film.