Jyrki Siukonen

Prof. Dr, Head of Sculpture Department, Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Finland

Towards a philosophy of tools

This research project aims at investigating the ways different 20th century sculptors have articulated their professional practice not in terms of art theory but rather as users of tools. The underlying hypothesis is that there is a particular language of manual studio work that escapes exact wording and flourishes in silence. Many a sculptor might agree with Henry Thoreau, who made his cabin by Walden pond “all with my narrow axe, not having many communicable or scholar-like thoughts”.

Practical foreground

I am a sculptor with more than twenty years professional experience. I have insight into art, its practices and different uses of language (writing, curating, teaching). The present research project draws from this experience, i.e. my position is that of a sculptor who uses his hands and is intrigued by the fact that many of the tasks those hands do remain so difficult to explain. This practical knowledge helps me to read how other sculptors have expressed themselves in these matters, even between the lines. Silence is a difficult opponent, though. In the discussion of artistic practices it is common to take up the notion of tacit knowledge, something that might be passed from one person or generation to another through showing things rather than explaining them with words. One typical situation could be a traditional studio occupied by a master and his apprentice, where the latter learns by following an example. But many 20th century sculptors were experimenting with things that had no earlier history of artistic usage. Artists had at their disposal a wide range of new materials, tools and techniques from plastics and electric tools to welding. Did these new possibilities and new skills produce a different way of talking? Perhaps a novel vocabulary? Or just a new kind of silence? Jyrki Siukonen (b. 1959)