Symbols of life

I am pretty sure this season’s crowd favourite at the Lux Helsinki 2015 event was the wooden egg-shaped OVO by ACT Lighting Design and Odeaubois, both from Belgium. This piece of art was seen glowing in changing colours in the backyard of the Hakasalmi villa.

Viewers could walk through the LED-illuminated sculpture to enjoy its light and sound installation at close range. Koert Vermeulen has designed the lights and Marcos Viñals Bassols the staging, while Pol Marchandise and Mostafa Hadi of Odeaubois have created the lattice structure out of poplar lamellae.

Naturally, OVO was also my favourite, most wonderful to look at and soothing to listen to. I stood nailed by it for quite a while. I never entered the sculpture as there was a constant queue in front of it. This is the piece I should have shot on video but couldn’t as my camera didn’t stand the cold. It had already started showing signs of dying out by that time I was on this spot.

OVO has been on show before on several locations around the world including Beijing, Jerusalem and the Fête des Lumières in Lyon, France. Now the conditions were somewhat harsher than in the other places it has visited. I do hope the structure survived the light snowfall and the few icicles it had to take in Helsinki and will continue its journey unharmed.

Hakasalmi villa.

If you missed my favourite from last season, my post (including a video) on the spectacular light installation projected onto the facade of the Hakasalmi villa can be found here.

The oval symbol of life and unity was also featured in another piece entitled simply Egg by Kustaa Saksi. He is a Finnish illustrator and artist whose rich nature-inspired designs are also internationally widely known. Regular readers might remember my post on the exhibition of his striking jacquard tapestries from some 18 months ago (here).

Now Saksi brought us a huge inflatable illuminated egg with decorations resembling a Fabergé egg. This piece was placed inside the glassed-in stage or band stand in the Esplanadi Park opposite the Kappeli restaurant. Egg was first seen in the Finnish pavilion at the Frankfurt Book Fair last October and was now part of the side programme of the light festival.

This is all on Lux Helsinki 2015. I am planning to attend the event also next January. Then I will most likely arrive by train from another town but let’s see.

Restaurant Kappeli.

Side entrance to the Helsinki Central Railway Station.