A3 Refereed book chapter or chapter in a compilation book

Utuinen kurotus kadotettuun kotiin – Nostalgian ja esoteerisuuden yhteydet Timo Vaittisen teoksissa Näkyjä ja Hexual Spellings




AuthorsSuutari, Inkeri

EditorsRoni Grén, Juhana Lahti, Tomi Moisio, Riikka Niemelä

Publication year2025

Book title Nykytaide katsoo taakseen. Lastuja Gösta Serlachiuksen taidesäätiön kokoelmasta

Series titleTaidehistoriallisia tutkimuksia

Number in series56

First page 139

Last page153

ISBN978-952-7441-90-9


Abstract

The article explores the entangled presence of esotericism and nostalgia in Timo Vaittinen’s Visions and Hexual SpellingsVisions is a series of risograph prints freely adapting the conventions of the visual culture of new spiritualities. Hexual Spellings in turn consists of a video and backstory about a company that produced made-to-order video spells in the 1980s. Both works are characterized by their visual ‘outdatedness’, situating their nostalgia in the very technique employed in creating the artworks. Esotericism and nostalgia both evince a backwards-looking orientation and a longing to reconstruct a lost past. At the same time, both also have a utopian, future-oriented dimension. Vaittinen’s works reveal that esotericism and nostalgia exist in complex interrelation with truth and imagination. The notion of ‘nature’ that is central to the imagery of new spiritualities takes on a nostalgic thrust when framed against the narrative of ‘return’ and the concept of narrative nostalgia borrowed from film studies.



Last updated on 2025-23-10 at 07:07