Kosen Ohtsubo & Tuomas A. Laitinen
Mitate 見立て
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Helsinki Contemporary is delighted to present Mitate 見立て, a joint exhibition by visual artist Tuomas A. Laitinen and Japanese ikebana master Kosen Ohtsubo. The exhibition brings together photographic works created collaboratively by the two artists and glass sculptures by Laitinen. The pair previously collaborated on Laitinen’s exhibition Siphon, which opened at Pioneer Works in New York in September.
Tuomas A. Laitinen is a contemporary artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans moving image, sound and glass. His work explores layered processes, drawing on both neuroscience and mythology. For many years, he has researched subjects such as octopus consciousness and these creatures’ remarkable capacity for adaptation. In this exhibition, glass sculptures from Laitinen’s series Proposal for an Octopus enter into dialogue with experimental floral arrangements by Kosen Ohtsubo (b. 1939), a world-renowned innovator in the art of ikebana.
Over more than six decades, Ohtsubo has pursued his practice in Japan and internationally, while also establishing himself as a dedicated teacher of ikebana traditions and techniques. His extensive oeuvre ranges from avant-garde compositions to intimate arrangements and large-scale installations, often incorporating vegetables, wild plants and found objects.
The exhibition’s title refers to a traditional Japanese aesthetic concept of mitate that can be translated as “likening something to something else”. In a Japanese garden, for instance, rocks might be arranged to evoke mountains. More broadly, mitate invites us to see the familiar anew: to transform an object’s meaning by shifting its context or to reveal unexpected symbolic associations. Yet the concept resists any single definition. At its heart are unexpected juxtapositions and the new perspectives they open up for the viewer.
Laitinen’s fascination with octopuses began with his research into the significance of copper in mythology and its applications in modern technology. This inquiry led him to explore the copper-based circulatory system of octopuses and, subsequently, to investigate other-than-human consciousness at a research institute in Okinawa, Japan. Throughout his practice, the layered interplay of diverse materials, temporal scales and the associations they evoke shapes both the conceptual substance and the aesthetic language of his work.
Glass is intimately connected to the Earth’s ancient geological history, often referred to as deep time. A material ubiquitous in the modern world, glass consists primarily of sand, itself the product of geological processes that have unfolded over millions, even billions, of years. As a solidified liquid, glass seems to hold time in suspension, giving tangible form to the paradox of time standing still. In the collaborative practice of Ohtsubo and Laitinen, the immense temporal scale embodied by glass encounters the fleeting life cycles of plants and flowers as they bloom, wither and decay.
