Edvin Hevonkoski was one of the key artists in Finnish ITE
(DIY) art's breakthrough around the Millennium. It was one
of his works - a huge head of the nation's president, Mrs.
Tarja Halonen, with hair of screaming red carwash machine
brushes - that crystallised this development in the 2005 Helsinki
exhibition In Their Own Worlds at the Museum of Contemporary
Art Kiasma. Displayed in the prominent plaza in front of the
museum, it was reigned over by the bronze statue of religiously
worshipped war marshal Mannerheim. The Masculine, Nationalistic,
Professional and Classic had to let the feminine, leftist
(Halonen, not Hevonkoski!), self-taught and carnivalistic
into the scene. Hevonkoski lived in the west coast town Vaasa,
working as a welder in a shipyard. His artistic career started
in the early 1980s when health problems forced him to retire.
One day he happened to carve a face on a fallen log on the
side of a jogging path near his home. Thus started what now
is Edvin's Path, a fantasy forest of some 200 sculptures,
many of which have since been included in exhibitions at home
and abroad. Hevonkoski immediately found a strong and expressive,
edgy style in his early wooden figures, but soon decided to
switch to metal for its durability. His skills as a smith
can be seen in his unique technique of stapling together round
washer plates left over from the welding industry. The result
was an airy metal fabric that won the weight of the material
and heavy figures. The works that frolic about Edvin's Path
depict figures of old tales and myths, characters of Finnish
literature classics, war heroes, forest animals. Hevonkoski
was a deeply patriotic war veteran, but never pathetic. Just
as the park is big, so is his creativity endless in its joyfulness.
His works are filled with humour, but his last work still
surprised everybody: a huge UFO carrying representatives from
another, more advanced civilization - ants and hedgehogs.
Hevonkoski died on October 8, 2009.
