After
Later in May, 2023
Future fragments
What about an exhibition of Reidar’s paintings with Palsa’s, together in Berlin?
The right words in the right ears at the right moment
All the Queer paintings picked out
In that bright space on Auguststraße
You know the one, with multiple floors
So that the Queers of this capital city could come by in their best clothes
And their black blacks
To see themselves refracted in the oil of the nineteen sixties
Seventies
Berlin wouldn’t care about Reidar fucking with Palsa
Their relationship is something very easy to imagine here
Reidar’s young when he dies
Fifty-six isn’t old
It’s not weird to have a lover twenty-two years younger than you in this town
Maybe Reidar’s painting are … a little conservative?
The assistant curator is saying
Their slender limbs swaying a bit under gauze fabric
That inability to keep still
Painted nails twitching, itching for a cigarette
Their attention drawn to the cocks and destruction in Palsa’s canvases
Lined up in a row on the other side of the space
Waiting to be hung
The wealthy gays visit too
It’s Easter
So they all flew in
Spent a fortune on their uniforms
But still have cash to splash
Out on the gallery scene
Being seen
And looking for a new addition for the walls back home
It’s a lucrative sideline that only looks like a hobby
Appears nonchalant from the outside
Shopping
But they know what they’re doing
They have discerning eyes
The older curator points out the colours of Reidar’s works
Look, let’s just have the brightest ones
The ones with really the most violent colours
And all the nudes
Beards and dicks
Blue, orange
Sunset yellow
It will still be the fag end of winter in Berlin
People need somewhere to escape to
To get out of all that grey
They need to stand in the gallery and be transported
They’re a sort of utopia, the paintings
Don’t you think?
I’m talking about Reidar’s here
Palsa’s, well …
Perhaps they are a utopia for someone in this city
(A chuckle)
You can get lost in those landscapes of Reidar’s
All I can see in those spaces are Queer beings and animals
Nobody wears any clothes
Wings, maybe
They might hold a flute in their fingers
There’s the river, the trees
The sky
There isn’t the threat of the outside world
No one is coming to hurt the bodies in this Arcardia
There’s a guide who is filmed for an Instagram story
Talking about the paintings for the camera
They stand in the gallery looking a bit uncomfortable in what they’ve chosen to wear
It signals their Queerness
Tokens of fetish
But they don’t quite fit, the clothes
Or it’s that their body isn’t quite what you imagine for these items
It’s somehow a bit too ordinary
In between
On the fence
A bit too soft
Maybe they’re new to the scene, haven’t quite settled into this new incarnation of themselves yet
Haven’t let go of the last glimmers of insecurity
Maybe the gallery halogens are a bit too bright
Does art change people’s lives?
If you hang the paintings here in this city of three-point-six million busy, stressed and hard-faced people
Out of context
Without the river, the trees
The sky
Will they do anything useful?
Can the art touch the edges of their rudeness?
Do the paintings just become a wallpaper for drinking down free glasses of white wine
A decorated room to sweep through
Looking for a friend to share the latest gossip
To dump the problem on
Seeking them out to pull away to the smoker’s balcony
Or down onto a parallel street for falafel
No, not falafel
Sushi
Tapas
Tapas from the nice tapas place that is open late
Does anyone visit and get to stand alone in the centre of the wide white room?
Is it ever quiet?
Do the ghosts visit?
Can you sense Reidar and Palsa in this place?
Would they want to come?
Can this sole person stand there one afternoon, mid-week, when the invigilator has taken a short bathroom break, and by chance, no one else is visiting?
It’s that moment in the day when people prefer to be downstairs in the café courtyard
Kaffee und Kuchen
Sole imaginary person is alone with the paintings
The colours circling them
Almost like a church
Despite the white, the glass, the contemporary gallery sheen
Perhaps, for a moment, they can imagine themselves as a being in heaven with their love
And simultaneously on the earth with their love
A Queer heaven
Not a heaven of anyone else’s making
An orange heaven
Made of warmth
Fire-heat
Clementines
Sun glow coming in through slanted windows
Golden hour pouring down onto skin
Juice flowing from a sticky carton
Fake tan
Wood stain
Wax
The colour of this imagined heaven is spiralling around them
Time stopping
No one coming in to the gallery to disrupt this moment of reverie
A brain reset
A threshold
They know something new for themselves now
They want to get out and call their love on their phone
As soon as their feet hit the cobbles downstairs, outside
They don’t
But they feel the feeling
To tell their love that they understand it now
How to be together on the earth with each other
How to make their own heaven in amongst everything else
That it’s just a fold in time
You just have to know how to fold the fabric the other way
To fold it back on itself
And then you’re there
It costs a lot of money to transport the paintings all this way
And to insure them
It means multiple institutions
And, therefore, also the people who run those institutions
All the power that goes with that
Power being a hard thing
A grip that’s too hard
Can the paintings survive all that?
Is this enough?
Do they have to be shown
Or is it enough just to propose it?
To say it into the world?
To see the paintings hanging there in that city, in my mind
And to simply say it aloud
It’s a reality now
It’s a thing that was said into the world
I go to see the paintings
I cycle from the south to the centre on my bike
Which has just been serviced after sitting, unused, in the litter-strewn Hof for the past several months
I cycle on my own
You are at home with your grammar books and a friend is coming over later
You already came to see the paintings with me when the show opened
This time I’m going back just for me
The city is beginning to warm up but there is a fresh breeze
My jacket from the second-hand store is rustling as I pedal
Turquoise and jade
Cycling is one of my favourite things here
Despite all the cars
The pollution
The bikes that won’t stop for the red lights
And the police, out of sight, beyond the junction
Adversaries laying in wait
When I’m cycling in that city
Time does a magic thing
It smoothes
Slips into a parallel stream
Where the tyres glide
And I am in the city, part of it
A particle
And also floating, apart
Able to see myself from outside
An infinite trajectory
Equal forces
I could cycle like that forever
I lock my bike outside to the stand and there is a free spot just for me right next to the entrance
It’s a charm
A universe sign
I stand at the entrance to the alley that leads into the gallery courtyard
Looking up at the tall stretch of banner rising up the front wall
Those two familiar names from the north
Reidar Särestöniemi & Kalvero Palsa
The ampersand entwining
Twisting around the last I and the first K
What about an exhibition of Reidar’s paintings with Palsa’s, together in Berlin?
The right words in the right ears at the right moment
All the Queer paintings picked out
In that bright space on Auguststraße
You know the one, with multiple floors
So that the Queers of this capital city could come by in their best clothes
And their black blacks
To see themselves refracted in the oil of the nineteen sixties
Seventies
Berlin wouldn’t care about Reidar fucking with Palsa
Their relationship is something very easy to imagine here
Reidar’s young when he dies
Fifty-six isn’t old
It’s not weird to have a lover twenty-two years younger than you in this town
Maybe Reidar’s painting are … a little conservative?
The assistant curator is saying
Their slender limbs swaying a bit under gauze fabric
That inability to keep still
Painted nails twitching, itching for a cigarette
Their attention drawn to the cocks and destruction in Palsa’s canvases
Lined up in a row on the other side of the space
Waiting to be hung
The wealthy gays visit too
It’s Easter
So they all flew in
Spent a fortune on their uniforms
But still have cash to splash
Out on the gallery scene
Being seen
And looking for a new addition for the walls back home
It’s a lucrative sideline that only looks like a hobby
Appears nonchalant from the outside
Shopping
But they know what they’re doing
They have discerning eyes
The older curator points out the colours of Reidar’s works
Look, let’s just have the brightest ones
The ones with really the most violent colours
And all the nudes
Beards and dicks
Blue, orange
Sunset yellow
It will still be the fag end of winter in Berlin
People need somewhere to escape to
To get out of all that grey
They need to stand in the gallery and be transported
They’re a sort of utopia, the paintings
Don’t you think?
I’m talking about Reidar’s here
Palsa’s, well …
Perhaps they are a utopia for someone in this city
(A chuckle)
You can get lost in those landscapes of Reidar’s
All I can see in those spaces are Queer beings and animals
Nobody wears any clothes
Wings, maybe
They might hold a flute in their fingers
There’s the river, the trees
The sky
There isn’t the threat of the outside world
No one is coming to hurt the bodies in this Arcardia
There’s a guide who is filmed for an Instagram story
Talking about the paintings for the camera
They stand in the gallery looking a bit uncomfortable in what they’ve chosen to wear
It signals their Queerness
Tokens of fetish
But they don’t quite fit, the clothes
Or it’s that their body isn’t quite what you imagine for these items
It’s somehow a bit too ordinary
In between
On the fence
A bit too soft
Maybe they’re new to the scene, haven’t quite settled into this new incarnation of themselves yet
Haven’t let go of the last glimmers of insecurity
Maybe the gallery halogens are a bit too bright
Does art change people’s lives?
If you hang the paintings here in this city of three-point-six million busy, stressed and hard-faced people
Out of context
Without the river, the trees
The sky
Will they do anything useful?
Can the art touch the edges of their rudeness?
Do the paintings just become a wallpaper for drinking down free glasses of white wine
A decorated room to sweep through
Looking for a friend to share the latest gossip
To dump the problem on
Seeking them out to pull away to the smoker’s balcony
Or down onto a parallel street for falafel
No, not falafel
Sushi
Tapas
Tapas from the nice tapas place that is open late
Does anyone visit and get to stand alone in the centre of the wide white room?
Is it ever quiet?
Do the ghosts visit?
Can you sense Reidar and Palsa in this place?
Would they want to come?
Can this sole person stand there one afternoon, mid-week, when the invigilator has taken a short bathroom break, and by chance, no one else is visiting?
It’s that moment in the day when people prefer to be downstairs in the café courtyard
Kaffee und Kuchen
Sole imaginary person is alone with the paintings
The colours circling them
Almost like a church
Despite the white, the glass, the contemporary gallery sheen
Perhaps, for a moment, they can imagine themselves as a being in heaven with their love
And simultaneously on the earth with their love
A Queer heaven
Not a heaven of anyone else’s making
An orange heaven
Made of warmth
Fire-heat
Clementines
Sun glow coming in through slanted windows
Golden hour pouring down onto skin
Juice flowing from a sticky carton
Fake tan
Wood stain
Wax
The colour of this imagined heaven is spiralling around them
Time stopping
No one coming in to the gallery to disrupt this moment of reverie
A brain reset
A threshold
They know something new for themselves now
They want to get out and call their love on their phone
As soon as their feet hit the cobbles downstairs, outside
They don’t
But they feel the feeling
To tell their love that they understand it now
How to be together on the earth with each other
How to make their own heaven in amongst everything else
That it’s just a fold in time
You just have to know how to fold the fabric the other way
To fold it back on itself
And then you’re there
It costs a lot of money to transport the paintings all this way
And to insure them
It means multiple institutions
And, therefore, also the people who run those institutions
All the power that goes with that
Power being a hard thing
A grip that’s too hard
Can the paintings survive all that?
Is this enough?
Do they have to be shown
Or is it enough just to propose it?
To say it into the world?
To see the paintings hanging there in that city, in my mind
And to simply say it aloud
It’s a reality now
It’s a thing that was said into the world
I go to see the paintings
I cycle from the south to the centre on my bike
Which has just been serviced after sitting, unused, in the litter-strewn Hof for the past several months
I cycle on my own
You are at home with your grammar books and a friend is coming over later
You already came to see the paintings with me when the show opened
This time I’m going back just for me
The city is beginning to warm up but there is a fresh breeze
My jacket from the second-hand store is rustling as I pedal
Turquoise and jade
Cycling is one of my favourite things here
Despite all the cars
The pollution
The bikes that won’t stop for the red lights
And the police, out of sight, beyond the junction
Adversaries laying in wait
When I’m cycling in that city
Time does a magic thing
It smoothes
Slips into a parallel stream
Where the tyres glide
And I am in the city, part of it
A particle
And also floating, apart
Able to see myself from outside
An infinite trajectory
Equal forces
I could cycle like that forever
I lock my bike outside to the stand and there is a free spot just for me right next to the entrance
It’s a charm
A universe sign
I stand at the entrance to the alley that leads into the gallery courtyard
Looking up at the tall stretch of banner rising up the front wall
Those two familiar names from the north
Reidar Särestöniemi & Kalvero Palsa
The ampersand entwining
Twisting around the last I and the first K