Teuri Haarla & Ulu Braun

PLANTHEON & BIODRUNK

15 - 24 April 2016

INVITED BY NIINA LEHTONEN BRAUN

Artist talk: Friday 22 April 2020 at 8 pm, moderated by P. Morarescu

ABOUT PLANTHEON FILM (60 MIN, 2015) BY ULU BRAUN & TEURI HAARLA: Everybody's life is a private research center of happiness, sorrow and pain. Our film presents Teuri's personal one. Plantheon is an intimate and experimental portrait of Finnish artist Teuri Haarla, and focuses on his holistic methods of dealing with infancy trauma and social pressures. "Ego-melting allowed regularly" leads to regressive Biodrunken performative acts, reflecting religion, philosophy. Balance is kept with family, building alone a house and a geometric tower 17m high. "Lets say: After childhood I just needed some rest." The film arose from the friendship between filmmaker Ulu Braun and Haarla, which allowed a spontaneous and artistic co-operation. We hope these cumulative survival strategies, creativity and unusual methods of "Amateuri" can inspire others.

Exhibited are also Teuri Haarla's photos of an environmental art work with a geometric tower "Plantheon Tower Meadow", a series of drawings "From inside the body" and a video work "Biodrunk - Penetrating through the barrier" (4 min, 2016). "In January 2012, I thought that I had already solved all the major problems of my life. Then suddenly my mother got demented and soon she died. Then happened 'this', what is seen in the picture. What this man is doing? Now I know the answer: He penetrates through the barrier, And the Beauty, i.e. the paradisal breast meadows are inside the Beast." Teuri Haarla (b.1955) has been creating land art since 1986, one of the first artists in this field in Finland. He also works with other media, such as performance, video, sculpture, drawing and writing. This land art is based on raising earthworms in the humus soils, which is the natural and non-violent method of cultivating the earth. Since he was seventeen, Haarla practiced different methods of meditation, until he developed his own spontaneous 'free-style' meditation, which he himself has given the name 'Biodrunk'. For five years it was done mostly by walking. Later the practice extended to simple forest, field and building work. His 'Biodrunk Work' widened the range and increased the amount of time spent in those most wanted states of mind and body. This life-style is self therapy too, because: "Essential in Biodrunk is that it allows the Return of the Repressed."

Haarla is a self-taught artist who has had solo exhibitions in Finland and his work has been shown in many group exhibitions in Europe. He has also received public commissions and his art is presented in many public and private collections, for example in Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art. Over the years he has taught art courses in different art schools in Finland.