With daylight still limited and the air still subject to arctic blasts, the time is right to see Dark Days, Bright Nights, in its waning days at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. The collection of works by Finnish artists commingles the political with the personal, the pieces suggesting in disparate ways the shared experience of living in a sometimes punishing climate, a place still marked by the wars that divided the land. This is art made by people struggling against something bigger; taken together, it conveys a sense of unrelaxing vigilance, of constant attention to what the country produces by weather and by culture.
Rauha Mäkilä's portrait series depicts haunted girls and women with empty eyes and carnivorous expressions. Against flat, single-color backgrounds of rose pink and icy blue, the five women seem momentarily caught midpassage, some of them eager to escape their oppressive walls. These are faces in winter. "Petite," the largest of the five, is striking red and orange, but the warmth of the colors is not a comfort. A young woman bows her head in profile, but it is her mouth we are focused on. Blood and scabs replace what should be a willowy pout, matching the crimson background. The smaller "Doora" looks directly at you. Her high white collar suggest a religious association, but the way her almond-shaped eyes stare from the shadows of her face is deeply disquieting. Her small mouth puckers hungrily like a wolf prowling the dusk.
Although most of the show focuses on paintings, Vesa-Pekka Rannikko's colorful two-channel video installation, "Canary," set up in a walled-off part of the gallery, is a highlight. Follow the taut climbing ropes that stretch from a carabiner in the wall to the larger-than-life canaries projected into a corner, the birds flat with primary colors — cadmium red, sunshine yellow and bright cyan. The sinewy ropes and their match— A.R.
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