EMERGENT ART

personal website of artist Pasi Kirkkopelto






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ABOUT ME


I am an artist, art educator and company owner at Makers’ Gallery in Vaasa, Finland. I graduated as an art educator (MA) from the University of Industrial Arts ( UIAH) in 1995.

Side by side with my working life as an art teacher I’ve cultivated my artistic career.

Latest career move was founding my own art gallery Makers’ Gallery in Vaasa with my wife in 2020. The gallery’s story ends in May 2026.

Now it’s time to concentrate on my art.

CV
EDUCATION
Art education | University of Industrial Arts 1995



EXHIBITIONS    Galleria A+ — 2024

Group exhibition


Makers’ Gallery — 2023

Mustan näkijät / Seeing Black


Printmakers Gallery — 2019

5


Galleria AVA — 2018

Mustat maalaukset / Black Paintings


Exhibition Curator and Instructor, Stories from Reality photography project — 2015–2016

Development of weekly themes, teaching, image critique, and exhibition production


Exhibition Curator, 100 Autumn Days
photography project — 2012–2013

Development of weekly themes for 160 amateur photographers, image critique, and exhibition production


Galleria Be19 — 2011

Solo: Sensus


Galleria Leo — 2007

Solo: Kevyt / Light


Studio Mezzo — 2006

Solo: Ei ainoastaan leivästä / Not of Bread Alone


Galleria Valööri, Helsinki — 1996

Solo: Paranna / Heal


Gallery Artson, Helsinki — 1994

Solo: Paljas / Bare


Kulttikeskus, Helsinki — 1993

Group exhibition: Ihmisiä / Humans


Galleria Artina, Helsinki — 1991

Nämä päivät, nämä työt / These Days, These Works


TEACHING Art educator

Onkilahti Comprehensive school
Vaasa

Art educator

Pohjois-Tapiola secondary and upper secondary school
Helsinki

Art educator

Pohjois-Helsinki secondary school

Art educator

Helsinki art college
Helsinki

Art educator
Hämeenkylä secondary and upper secondary school
Vantaa

SKILS
Art teaching
Life drawing (and teaching life drawing)
Curating
Exhibition building






Last Updated 24.10.31

SELECTED WORKS  |  IN WORDS



Omakuva toisten silmin / Selfportrait in others’ eyes / Work in progress
Uhri /Sacrifice ( 2026) Ink, gesso and chalk on hardboard
 ´´´´´

IN NO SHAPE OR FORM
30.10.-18.11.2026
GALLERIA SASKIA / TAMPERE Samples of my works for upcoming exhibition with artists Mirja Ilkka and Pasi Erik Karjula

The exhibition title “In no shape or form / Ei millään muotoa” literally refers to an absolute refusal, but in our exhibition its meaning shifts toward questioning the permanence of form—and of the artwork itself—embracing an intuitive way of working and the acceptance of constant change. Three artists approach form and the problem of form from different perspectives in their works. Must a work have a fixed, finished form, and who determines it—the artist, the work itself, or only the viewer encountering it?



MUSTAN NÄKIJÄT / SEEING BLACK
10.8.-3.9. 2023
Makers’ Gallery, Vaasa
The starting point for the works in this exhibition is a small, black hymn board—resembling a key cabinet—that I saw about 30 years ago in a church in the old town of Stockholm. It made a strong impression on me and has returned to my thoughts at regular intervals. I have previously made one work based on it. For this exhibition, I looked for information about hymn boards as objects. Despite their familiarity, there is surprisingly little written about them as part of church architecture, as independent objects, or as examples of craftsmanship.


Only a few years ago did I fully understand what it is about these hymn boards that fascinates and moves me. I realized that the numbers on the board, much like works of art, reflect the stages and fundamental experiences of human life. The hymns and their numbers speak of life and death, hope, sorrow, longing, and the happiness in between. With these works, I attempt to convey these emotions and to offer the viewer an opportunity for contemplation. Each viewer may complete the works through their own experiences

The poems presented in the exhibition are not directly related to the works. They were written at different times, most of them, however, within the past few years.




5 
2019
Printmakers Gallery, Vaasa My first exhibition in Vaasa.

The theme of this exhibition is change. I have made important decisions in my life - I moved to Vaasa in the autumn and I started a new job.

I also wanted to include one older image in this exhibition, because I wanted to show where I'm coming from, from where the change probably began. Some of these works have been unfinished ideas for years. During the spring my work began to show development  towards new directions.

My style is changing. In the past, I've made almost exclusively drawings. New influences have surfaced, technique is evolving, new works are approaching abstraction.

The human figure has been a central theme in my art from the beginning, but in recent years it has started to become fragmented. Now I'm interested in things that are in a state of change - emerging or dissolving.




MUSTAT MAALAUKSET / BLACK PAINTINGS
2018
AVA Gallery, Helsinki
The exhibition title is borrowed from a series by Francisco de Goya that has fascinated me for a long time. Like Goya, many artists have, within their body of work, a group of pieces that differ in subject matter or method—often more personal and intimate. Very soon after I began, it became clear that these would become my Black Paintings.


The works address the human condition—what it means to be human when we encounter something inevitable: our own limits, fear, the unfamiliar, strange experiences, death, survival.


The title also refers to color and to a way of working that is exceptional for me. I began from a blank slate, without a preconceived plan. Now that the works are complete, I see that they nevertheless form a coherent whole.


I consider myself a draftsman, and as such I usually have control over what I do. However, the technique I chose forced me to approach the materials with humility. Liquid black ink and the porosity of the paper made the process unpredictable, and this simply had to be accepted.


Soundtrack: Fink:Resurgam.



SENSUS
1.8.-19.8.2011 | BE19sensus (Lat.): meaning, sensation, sense, feeling / perception (the ability to…), feeling (the capacity for…), sentiment, understanding, reason

The starting points of the exhibition are emotional states and sensory experiences as a kind of space—an experience without a fixed object. The figure in the images senses, feels, experiences, tests, and encounters a boundary between itself, another person, the real world, and the reality of the image. I have tried to give form to what it feels like to be in such a state, in such a feeling.

I work thematically. Figures and motifs move from one work to another, seeking new meanings. The formation of a coherent whole takes a long time, but the act of making each image is highly intense—fast and physical.

On materials: In my mixed-media works, I use charcoal, black ink, watercolor, and oil pastel, drawing and painting with all of them. Each medium requires a different approach; for me, they represent different attitudes and ways of sensing. Their interaction creates intriguing worlds—the materials communicate with one another…

Soundtrack: P.J. Harvey&John Parish: A woman a man walked by

KEVYT / LIGHT
6.11-29.11 2007 | galleria LEOStudies on the Emergence of Images, Their Material, Subjects, and Weight

Essential: a sense of wonder before the image and its coming into being—how an immaterial, everyday perception takes form as colors or lines—transforms into meanings and creates its own reality, which may be disorienting, strange.

As the maker of the image, I am interested in the immaterial nature of motifs and of charcoal, or the fragility of a line, and, on the other hand, in the artwork as a material piece, an object.

Technique: I use compressed charcoal in my work, whose deep black mark is intense, weighty. As a surface, it recedes, becomes immaterial. When worked heavily, it crumbles, turns to dust, runs, drifts, disappears, revealing its immaterial, light nature. The traces of making remain visible—there is something lost, never found, chance, layers, time…

The works have no titles—while making them I have been thinking of the following:

light, nonexistent, immaterial, transparent, as light as air, movement, balance, floating, imagined, infinite, open, closed





EI AINOASTAAN LEIVÄSTÄ | NOT BY BREAD ALONE
8.– 29.11. 2006 STUDIO MEZZO
not

by bread alone

but also by the salt of life, by hopes

and their fulfillment, by balance and its disturbance,

by mountains and the journey toward them, by time and its passing, by letting go.


the miracle of an ink blot: when encountering an image, everyone has the right to ask: what do I see in this image? What meanings do I attach to it at this moment?


reality: all works originate in reality — in what has been seen, experienced,

dreamed. Even though the motifs have crystallized over time and the form has been reduced, everything remains visible.


materials: rye bread, salt, charcoal, ink, ultramarine pigment, copper, brass, found objects, and chance


on the process: both in the images and in the three-dimensional works, the starting point has been in the materials or their forms, and in the meanings associated with them. I work by combining materials and motifs in different ways and observing what emerges from their collision.

Repetition is an essential element. Meaning shifts and clarifies through experimentation, in the dialogue between materials.



PARANNA | HEAL
1996 GALLERIA VALÖÖRI
The presence and interaction of materials, and the act of exposing oneself to their effects, formed the core of the exhibition. Copper and plaster represent, for me, opposing forces of life. Copper embodies the negative, destructive forces and traits of the human mind. The material’s hardness, sheen, coldness, and reflectivity stand in a compelling contradiction to the warmth, vitality, and depth of its color. Alongside the transformative nature of copper, plaster—porous, pure, and calmly white—represents constructive forces, the human impulse to repair, to heal, and to bring comfort. The incompatibility of the materials and their spiritual affinity alternate.


I wanted—and still want—the mark of life to be visible in the artwork. That is why I often use materials that change: plaster, copper, wood, and the fluids of life—milk, blood, and wine. In them, natural transformations remain visible, exposed to time. The meanings of these elements have become clarified through subjective experience, without any universal symbolic explanation.


The urge to repair and to heal is also present in the imagery. Through these motifs, I have searched within my own experiential world for points of growth and places of pain. From an image archive—Renaissance church architectural sketches and fortress plans—I discovered, instead of the ideal of the universal genius, an uncertain master: a person aware of their own fragility, who, through creative work, seeks to strengthen both themselves and others, to heal through acts of consecration. In the image of a single human being—with their internal organs and vital functions—the master returns to human scale: a feeling, sensing human being.

© CARGO TEST 2027



STATEMENT: ART AS AN EMERGENT PHENOMENON


Definition

A higher-level phenomenon that arises from certain components but is not reducible to them; it exists in ways different from its constituent parts.

Explanation

Emergent properties are characteristics of complex phenomena that cannot be reduced to the properties of their individual parts. For example, molecules may have properties derived from their structure that cannot be explained solely by the properties of individual atoms. Similarly, social phenomena may (according to some views) possess properties arising from social structures that cannot be understood merely by examining individuals. There is, as yet, no consensus on the metaphysical assumptions or implications associated with emergence—nor on whether emergence is simply an increase in complexity or a distinct metaphysical phenomenon. (Finnish Terminology Bank for the Arts and Sciences)

Art as an emergent phenomenon

A work of art is essentially an emergent phenomenon—a crystallization of numerous factors. It is a synthesis of history, culture, art history, personal history, worldview, values, personality, education, technological development, and countless other influences, and it cannot be reduced to or exhaustively explained by any of them.


In emergent materialism, consciousness is understood to arise from the complex interaction of simpler components. In the context of art theory, this perspective can be used to explore how artistic expression emerges in the creative process through the interaction of material, cultural, and cognitive elements.


Emergence also aptly describes the artist’s working process, the formation of the artwork, and the transformations that occur during artistic practice.


Is a work of art something “more advanced” or “higher”? Hardly. It is always something else. A work is always change. It is always different from—and more than—the sum of its parts, more than the result of a process or the intention of its maker. A work of art is a questioning of existence—a question for which there is no (or at least no single) answer.