Text: Sanna Lipponen
Translation: Elävä Kieli
Documentary photographs: Helen Korpak
Artwork images: Jussi Tiainen

This text was originally published in the exhibition publication Third Life, the collection exhibition of Seppo Fränti. The exhibition was on view at Kirpilä Art Collection from 31 August to 7 December 2025.

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We treat desire as a problem to be solved, address what desire is for and focus on that something and how to acquire it rather than on the nature and the sensation of desire, though often it is the distance between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing.¹

In her essay collection A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2017), Author Rebecca Solnit writes beautifully about longing and desire. She encourages us to linger with desire and accept longing as a part of life. By stopping and lingering, we can observe distances and mountains gleaming blue in the distance, but attempting to chase the blue only causes it to sink further away.

However, desire is the starting point for accumulating an art collection. The desire to see different works of art must be present in order to foster the desire for a specific piece. And when you collect art in your own home, you must want to not only own a piece, but also live with it. You must have the desire to create a tie between yourself and the piece. The desire to see pieces, to seek out new pieces, and to commit to pieces of art over and over. Seppo Fränti and Juhani Kirpilä are united by this common desire, which ultimately brought them to fill their homes with art.

Solnit continues exploring longing and its acceptance, and distances better left unsurmounted:

If you can look across the distance without wanting to close it up, if you can own your longing in the same way that you own the beauty of that blue that can never be possessed? For something of this longing will, like the blue of distance, only be relocated, not assuaged, by acquisition and arrival, just as the mountains cease to be blue when you arrive among them and the blue instead tints the next beyond.²

When it comes to accumulating an art collection, accepting longing is impossible, and yet at the same time inevitable. Desire steers the collector to purchase a piece and perhaps this alleviates unwanted feelings momentarily, until the blue of distance instead tints the next beyond, the next piece. A collection does not come into being if longing is accepted and the collector resigns themselves to observing from a distance. More specifically, they must always be chasing the next blue.

 In other words, without desire, there is no collecting or collection. Nonetheless, Solnit is right: acquiring things does not quell the unwanted feeling, because ultimately the destination is unreachable. The desire is never fulfilled and the collection is never complete. The blue gleam of the mountains is always just out of reach.

Labyrinth of Possibilities

When it comes to the blue of the mountains, viewing them from a certain distance is key. Taking a broader perspective, observing is also tied fundamentally to from where and how we view something. When it comes to pieces of art, the viewing experience is influenced by all kinds of factors, such as whether they are viewed in the artist’s studio, in a museum as part of an exhibition, or in our own home. Elements such as the lighting, dimensions and other materials in the space also have a substantial impact on observation. As does the time we dedicate to looking at the piece.

Seppo Fränti describes living with pieces of art as a privilege. According to him, the soul rests and finds peace when allowed to take in pieces of art at home.³ And spending time with pieces from one year to the next allows them take on different meanings and be seen through the lenses of different phases of life. They can be viewed at any time, in different seasons, at different times of day, and in different lights. You can also move a piece around and touch it when you own it. Change its location so that it can be seen in a whole new way. The relationship with the pieces of art deepens and evolves with time.

The majority of the pieces in Fränti’s and Kirpilä’s collections are paintings. A painting is not a durational or time-bound piece, but often the viewing experience changes when the piece is examined for an extended period.

Art Historian Riikka Stewen put Fränti’s collection into words as she provided an interesting perspective on looking at a painting. She describes how “the viewer can observe a picture in any sequence, starting at the front, in the middle, on the left or the right, and altering the progression at any time. We can examine the components of a picture, then go back and compare and contrast them in various ways, building a whole new, different story from that point onward.” ⁴

And just as each painting is a temporal labyrinth, so a collection as a whole is a maze of possibilities: it can be viewed in countless ways and constructed into innumerable stories and narratives.⁵

Pieces in the same collection combine to form their own, kaleidoscopic whole, where different forms of expression and an almost infinite number of interesting connections and contrasts form between works created with different means. The connections could be thematic, or, for example, the repetition of a certain shade in different pieces.

The experience of viewing the works on display at Kirpilä Art Collection is fundamentally influenced by their environment: the rooms – once a home and now a museum – with their furniture and lighting, and how the pieces have been hung close together. Kirpilä’s pieces combine to form something new entirely, but what happens to this when pieces from Seppo Fränti’s collection are placed between them? When two collections, two homes and two collectors meet in the same space?

Emotions and Uncharted Territory

Kirpilä Art Collection is extensive and focuses in particular on figurative art from the 20th century by Finnish artists. Prominent in the collection are strong colours, portraits and landscapes, and nude subjects.⁶ The collection features pieces by well-known Finnish artists from Helene Schjerfbeck and Pekka Halonen to Magnus Enckell and Hugo Simberg. The most extensive artist-specific subcollections focus on Åke Mattas, Yrjö Saarinen and Kain Tapper.⁷

In 2017, Seppo Fränti donated a substan-tial collection of approximately 650 pieces to Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma. After making the donation, Fränti continued collecting, and Kirpilä Art Collection’s Third Life exhibition features works from both the donation to Kiasma and Fränti’s own collection.

The collection donated to Kiasma is focused in particular on paintings from the 2010s by Finnish artists, featuring broader subsets of works by Olli Marttila, Henry Wuorila-Stenberg, Jussi Goman and Kim Somervuori.⁸ Fränti has always been drawn in particular to expressionism, minimalism, abstract paintings, and emotive portraits.⁹

Fränti knew Juhani Kirpilä well and followed his collecting activities closely from the 1970s. According to Art Historian Juha-Heikki Tihinen, both Fränti’s and Kirpilä’s collections are linked by their abundance and broad scope. However, he highlights one significant difference: the stage the artists were at in their careers when the pieces became part of the collectors’ collections:

The Kirpilä Collection is more historically inclined, and its artists had mostly achieved their place in the canon of art history by the time Juhani Kirpilä acquired their works. The Fränti Collection is characterised by young artists whose works he acquired at an early stage.¹⁰

Susanna Pettersson, who has researched art collecting extensively, has interviewed collectors, museum directors, gallery owners, and other influential figures in the art world. Their answers reveal recurring descriptions of the powerful emotional reaction a piece awakens.

Many said that you have to feel a piece. One said it was deep in their belly, another in their heart, while a third talked about it ‘giving goosebumps.’ However, it comes down to the same thing, regardless of whether the collector is a private collector or someone curating a public collection. A piece needs to awaken feelings and thoughts, and it has to be good. Generally, they know right away.¹¹

In other words, art collecting is strongly guided by feeling. Trusting one’s own intuition and openness, curiosity and courage. Alongside knowing and developing individual tastes, understanding and seeing more broadly what is happening in art is important. Pettersson continues:

When collecting art, it largely comes down to the ability to perceive. It is a synthesis of accumulated knowledge and experience of.¹²

The broad nature of Fränti’s collection and its natural flow, for example from expres-sionism to minimalism, tell of the collector’s openness and ability to surrender to a variety of forms of art. It requires courage to step into unexplored areas, to tread one’s own path, and to have the courage to change direction if that is what feels right.

Fränti’s collection is, in its diversity, a demonstration of his approach to collecting not being strictly systematic. In fact, it appears to be more of a way of life, where friendship plays a key role, not only with the works but also with the artists. He prioritises his heart and emotions in making his choices.

Collection as a Self-Portrait and Archive

Philosopher Jean Baudrillard wrote about collecting various different things, as an activity not intended to have an end point. Baudrillard’s views on collecting are heavily coloured by sexuality or a yearning for immortality, but his idea that a collector inevitably collects them-selves is interesting. He also describes a kind of blurring of the distinction between the object of the collecting and the collector themselves, where the object becomes part of the collection and is thus redefined through its collector. At the same time, the collector is defined – or defines themselves – through their collection and every item in it.¹³ Through this lens, works of art, collections and collectors are in a constant state of interaction and change.

Seppo Fränti’s collection has been characterised among other things as a self-por-trait of the collector14 and assorted nuts, with a wide variety all in the same bag.¹⁵ When talking about Fränti’s collection, Riikka Stewen states: “For me, it presents itself as an encyclopaedic archive of emotions and experiences, rem-iniscent of the Library of Babel in the story by the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, which contains, in infinite permutations, all of the texts that can be created out of a certain alphabet.”¹⁶ The Library of Babel deceives and misleads with its magnitude, but both it and Fränti’s collection can also be seen as meeting points for all the works they contain, as well as the emotions, interpretations and stories they give rise to.

Many of the works in the collection seem to almost guide the viewer specifically towards an intuitive and emotionally-grounded viewing. Although Fränti’s collection is diverse and open to a variety of interpretations, it does reflect its collector. Fränti himself even feels that he is revealed and reveals himself through his collection: “I am completely open about what I am like as an individual, and what kind of person has gathered this collection.” ¹⁷

If we take Fränti’s collection to be a self portrait, what does it look like? What kind of mindscape do the pieces convey?

The works from Fränti’s collection on display in the Third life exhibition depict environments varying from lush landscapes to referential or empty spaces. Many of the paintings feature a strong sense of movement or some kind of element that gives rise to a sense of restlessness and is difficult to put into words.

In Kalle Leino’s painting Pier (2008), in places the landscape appears static, while in other places it seems to be in the midst of furious movement. The brush strokes blow over the piece like gusts of wind. Strokes glide through the sky, water and further away the blueish horizon and green land. On the right of the painting, movement suddenly halts: the sky, water, opposite shoreline and tall trees in the foreground are more clearly distinguish-able and stationary – almost as if the storm is withdrawing with clear-cut precision right there in front of your eyes. It is this impression of movement and the differences in it within the piece that make the shore scene feel unreal and the painting interesting.

Jarkko Räsänen’s piece, ordered dance (swept tree) (2010), offers a sense of move-ment that is just as powerful. The photograph is abstract and thus interpretable as a landscape where the boundary between the green and the white forms a horizon. It offers scintillating vibration created by the artist’s method: Räsänen chops up and reassembles images with his own image processing programme. It is as if the piece and its elements have cap-tured and imbued that movement of disintegra-tion and coming together in their essence.

A large proportion of the pieces on display from Fränti’s collection feature some kind of human figure. Often, the figures are stylized and present in empty spaces. In Eeva Tiisala’s drawings, the figures are floating on white paper. The body’s forms meander across the page as outlines, whereas the head and face are more detailed and highly expressive. The figures succeed in invoking both restlessness and tenderness simultaneously.

Olli Marttila’s paintings on paper feature human figures that are simplified in form yet expressive. They look as if they are wondering about their environment, the expanse surrounding them.

In Marttila’s painting Finding an Answer to Something You Didn’t Know You Were Looking For (2005), a dark human figure resembles a shadow stood up. The earth is a narrow dark strip along the bottom of the painting. The figure on the left stands out from the blue-grey shades of the background as a brilliant white rectangular area floating in the air. The piece’s restrained colour palette offers a hazy and mys-terious air, perhaps even tinged with longing or melancholy. Where does the lighter area lead? Is it a gateway to the past or some kind of brand new, different dimension?

In Erno Pennanen’s large-scale painting Nightwright (2022), a white-clad, veiled figure effectively commands not only the entire painting, but also the space around it. In its brilliant white outfit, the figure stands out with its paleness, while its eyes and mouth are dark and expressionless. The black background and red gloves, along with the strict cropping, bring drama to the piece. The way the figure is stood motionless on the spot against a dark back-ground, like a vision, an apparition, or a ghost, gives it the power to startle.

In Jenny Suhonen’s painting a distorted dance / strutsi (2010), the viewer’s gaze is cap-tured by a human figure composed of different – and separate – parts. The figure’s upper body takes shape with cottony brush strokes forming hair covering the face and the sleeves of the figure’s clothes against a dark background. At the midriff is a white area, with palms and feet differentiated by dark outlines. The figure is floating in the space of the painting, which is divided into the darkness of the top part and the icy blue and orangey-yellow of the bottom part. The boundary between the colour blocks forms a horizon that divides the image in two below the figure’s armpits. One of the figure’s legs is swollen and clearly larger than the other, as well as being twisted into a strange position, emphasising even further the impression that the parts of the body and whole painting hold tension, writhing in relation to each other.

An exception to the sense of restlessness awakened by many of the other works on display comes in the form of Erik Creutziger’s painting Pool Party (2022). In it, nude figures exist in peace in a lush landscape. One is swimming in the water, others are standing or sitting by the water’s edge. The atmosphere emanates a paradise-like light, lushness and calm.

A collection is a kind of self portrait of the collector, but Fränti’s collection also contains a portrait of him. It is apt that the name of Jussi Goman’s painting, Seppo Gazing at a Distant Star in Bacon’s Room (2019) contains a refer-ence to art and especially to Francis Bacon, an artist particularly important to Fränti.

In the painting, Fränti’s head is depicted as red hot and clad in his glasses. The sur-rounding space is pink and highly referential. On the left is a bright blue spot that draws the gaze of the Fränti depicted in the painting and the viewer.

While observing a far-away star stretches the gaze and distances light years from Solnit’s blue mountains, as I look at the piece I return to how collecting art comes down to feelings, desire and longing, and reaching for things far away and unknown. Equally, it is about explor-ing being human and turning to the significance and mysteries of art.

Memory without Language

Where Goman’s painting draws the gaze to a far-away star, Olga Ravn’s novel, The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century (2020) takes place in space, light years from Earth. The novel comprises interviews with spaceship workers, where they talk about their relationship with the rooms in the ship and the objects in them.

The members of the crew are humans and humanoid creatures. In the interviews, they talk about mysterious objects from a new planet. The objects buzz, emitting a humming or an electric droning, their temperature varies, they seem aware or indifferent, they smell of citrus fruit or peach pit, a resinous fluid oozes from them and one looks like a gift package tied with pink ribbon.

The interviews reveal how the objects stimulate, confuse and console the crew members in ways highly reminiscent of experiences of art:

I keep thinking about the one on the purple hide. Something about it that makes me react differently than the others do. Is this what my co-workers have told me about? A feeling, a sense of attachment? Do you know? Has it got a name? What do you call it?  Is it normal? ¹⁸

Like art, the objects awaken unexpected and powerful emotions in the crew members. They offer comfort but also challenge with their very existence – just like art does. They speak to people in a way that is difficult to put into words but that at the same time intuitively understandable:

There’s something familiar about them, even if you’ve never seen them before. As if they came from our dreams, or some distant past we carry deep inside us, like a recollection without language. ¹⁹

Ravn’s novel depicts wonderfully how the relationship with objects is formed and the kind of enchantment they offer. The significance of objects is an experience that is both shared and vey personal.

My work with the objects has started to feel unreal. I’ve found myself standing there staring at them for minutes at a time without doing anything. As if the objects only existed so as to awaken particular feelings in me by way of their form and material. As if that were their actual purpose.²⁰

I probably link the descriptions of objects in Ravn’s novel with works of art because at best, I feel something similar when around art: the connection to a piece is powerful and feels as if the piece exists exclusively for me – as if I recognise it from my dreams or memories. When it comes to art, I am fascinated by how it is shared yet personal, recognisable and yet still secret.

External and Internal Landscapes

Works of art are interesting things. They are inanimate objects, and yet at the same time seem very much alive. They can awaken within us thoughts, feelings, difficult-to-describe emo-tions and bodily reactions. They have the ability to change us. Looking at art opens up more perspectives beyond the piece, perspectives on ourselves and the surrounding world.

In addition to the blue mountains Rebecca Solnit mentions, I am drawn to her thoughts about how the settings and places in which we live shape us. Solnit writes about how feelings we experience strongly are tied to places, and thus the places are tied to us:

Thus place, which is always spoken of as though it only counts when you’re present, possesses you in its absence, takes on another life as a sense of place, a summoning in the imagination with all the atmospheric effect and association of a powerful emotion. The places inside matter as much as the ones outside.²¹

Places are thus transformed into a part of our internal landscape, part of our sense of self. I think that, in the same way, works of art that we see, experience or live with shape us. Face to face with art it is possible to experience powerful feelings that live on with us as memo-ries and mindscapes.

In addition to meaningful places, the art works we see and experience also make us into what we are. Works of art offer us countless windows through which we can see in and out. They awaken in us desire and longing. Art is a labyrinth of possibilities, with the different directions inviting and surprising us time and time again.

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References

1 Solnit 2020, 30.
2 Ibid. 30–31.
3 Conversation with Seppo Fränti,17 January 2025.
4 Stewen 2020, 113.
5 Ibid.
6 Ruohonen 2017, 24.
7 Palin 2017, 52.
8 Hacklin & Kivinen, 2020, 8.
9 Knuuti 2021.
10 Tihinen 2020, 72.
11 Pettersson 2017
12 Pettersson 2017.
13 Baudrillard 1994, 12.
14 Tihinen 2020, 52.
15 Haapala 2020, 132.
16 Stewen 2020, 110.
17 Haapala 2020, 165.
18 Ravn 2022, 18.
19 Ravn 2022, 41.
20 Ibid. 40.
21 Solnit 2020, 118.

Literature

Baudrillard, Jean: “The System of Collecting”. In The Cultures of Collecting. Eds. John Elsner & Roger Cardinal. Harvard University Press & Reaktion Books. 1994.

Borges, Jorge Luis: “The Library of Babel”. Collected Fictions. Transl. Andrew Hurley. Penguin. 1998.

Haapala, Leevi: “Afterheat – The Collection in the Collector’s Eyes: Leevi Haapala Interviewing Seppo Fränti”. In Mad Love – The Seppo Fränti Collection at Kiasma. Eds. Saara Hacklin & Kati Kivinen. Parvs. 2020.

Hacklin, Saara & Kivinen, Kati: “When a Passionate Collector Meets a Museum: The Curators’ Look at the Seppo Fränti Collection”. In Mad Love – The Seppo Fränti Collection at Kiasma. Eds. Saara Hacklin & Kati Kivinen. Parvs. 2020.

Knuuti, Samuli: “Seppo Fränti kärsi matkalla kaapatuksi joutumisen traumasta vuosia: taide ja terapia auttoivat tasapainoon”. Mondo (apu.fi)
14.4.2021.

Palin, Tutta: “Portraits and landscapes as collector’s items”. In A Home for Art – The Juhani Kirpilä Art Collection. Ed. Johanna Ruohonen. SKS. 2017.

Pettersson, Susanna: “Teoksen pitää tuntua – taiteen keräilyn äärellä”. Ateneum.fi 27.2.2017.

Ravn, Olga: The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century. English translation by Martin
Aitken. Lolli Editions. 2020.

Ruohonen, Johanna: “From home to museum”. In A Home for Art – The Juhani Kirpilä Art Collection”. Ed. Johanna Ruohonen. SKS. 2017.

Solnit, Rebecca: A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Canongate Books. 2017.

Stewen, Riikka: “Ghosts, Black Squares, Marshmallows, Manbabies: Emotions and Affects in the Fränti Collection”. In Mad Love – The Seppo Fränti Collection at Kiasma. Eds. Saara Hacklin & Kati Kivinen. Parvs. 2020.

Tihinen, Juha-Heikki: “Moomin-Like Joy and the Seppo Fränti Art Collection”. In Mad Love – The Seppo Fränti Collection at Kiasma. Eds. Saara Hacklin & Kati Kivinen. Parvs. 2020.