The Model and a Mad Painter

Serlachius Manor

14.06.2014

—07.05.2017

The exhibition The Model and the Mad Painter at the Old Manor of Art Museum Gösta boldly breaks the boundaries of a traditional art exhibition. A total artwork has been created on the upper floor of the manor, combining literary texts with works of art and hanging. 

The title of the exhibition, The Model and the Mad Painter, refers to Akseli Gallen-Kallela, who stayed and worked in the Ekola croft in Keuruu in the late 1880s. He gained a crazy reputation in the minds of the locals and the nickname “mad painter”.

The exhibition presents Finnish Golden Age art and modernism along the timeline of art history. This time, the familiar story of Finnish art is told from the perspective of the models of the works, not the artists and art history. Eerikki, the owner of Ekola, a nude model posing at an art school in Paris, and a butterfly that has landed on a worker’s trousers all get a chance to speak.

Riikka Ala-Harja’s fictional texts are based on facts from the history of art. Often very little is known about the models that have remained anonymous, but through Ala-Harja’s texts, we get to empathise with the era and the imaginary moment when the paintings were made. Ala-Harja’s texts occupy more space than usual – they are spread out on the walls among the paintings. The goal is a total artwork in which the exhibition architecture and texts expand the story of the painting into the space.

The exhibition has been curated by Laura Kuurne, Chief Curator of the Serlachius Museums. Its visual identity was created by set designer Tarja Väätänen and the texts were written by author and playwrite Riikka Ala-Harja.