CERTAINTY PRECEDES THE END (2012)

 

Certainty Precedes the End (Varmuus enteilee loppua)

Paulon Foundation Invitational Exhibition 2012
Gallery FAFA, Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki
23 August – 9 September 2012

Artist: Iiris Kaarlehto (Free Art School)
Curator: Ville Laaksonen

Project description:

The exhibition and its accompanying publication examined the fragile space between doubt, faith, and perception — a philosophical meditation on painting as both a material act and a psychological state. Kaarlehto’s works, characterized by delicate atmospheres and quiet sensuality, resisted spectacle. They invited viewers to experience stillness as intensity, to perceive emotion not as narrative but as resonance.

In his curatorial essay “If Only One Dares to Pause,” Laaksonen argued that true artistic integrity lies in honesty rather than certainty. The selection of Kaarlehto was not based on provocation or theoretical positioning but on the authenticity of her sensibility — an artist whose painting existed for the sake of experience itself. The project continued Laaksonen’s thinking that began with the Honest Painters group (2006): a belief that art must arise from sincerity and vulnerability rather than from external validation or institutional ideology.

The accompanying publication deepened this dialogue, featuring an extended conversation between Laaksonen and artist-philosopher Henri Hagman. Their exchange traversed painting, faith, transcendence, and the metaphysics of honesty — contemplating art’s utopian and spiritual dimensions within a contemporary secular condition. Together, they framed painting as a process of becoming aware through seeing: a mode of consciousness that fuses intuition, material, and thought.

As curator, Ville Laaksonen extended this theme into the curatorial field, reflecting on transparency and the visibility of the curator’s role. In his earlier commentary (Voima, 8/2011), he proposed that curators should maintain public curatorial pages, much like artists’ websites, to make their selections, methods, and decisions visible as part of an open cultural process.

At its core, Certainty Precedes the End asked whether art can exist without doubt — and concluded that uncertainty is the condition of creation. The exhibition and publication together formed an early articulation of Laaksonen’s evolving curatorial philosophy: an ethics of openness, process, and reflection that would later develop into the conceptual framework of Art Incubator.

The exhibition also included an online component, honestpainter.blogspot.com, which documented the process and reflected on the dialogue between artist and curator. This early digital archive positioned the exhibition as both a physical and virtual space — a curatorial experiment at the threshold of two worlds.

Through its modest scale and conceptual clarity, Certainty Foretells the End foreshadowed the curatorial philosophy that would evolve in Laaksonen’s later projects: a commitment to openness, dialogue, and the redefinition of artistic and curatorial roles in the contemporary landscape.