My four-year-old daughter has been lately asking me about the global economy. She wants to know what the Chinese real estate bubble means, why it could make the economy of the United States collapse, and how that would influence Europe. First, I was amazed that she was interested in economics and I felt uncomfortable because I don't understand these things too well but then I realized that she was just scared of the end of the world and I had to make her feel protected and safe.

When I was kid, I was afraid of the nuclear war. I had nightmares of the United States decapitation strike to Leningrad, just few hundred kilometers from Helsinki where I lived. Then the doomsday was related with the third world war, the battle between two different ideologies, but now the danger have changed. There is no dichotomy between evil and good (Heavenly bastard in the sky, how simple the world of the cold war was!), but just the global capitalism - without any opponent -  that must be kept running at any price. The most eminent fear  of my daughter's generation is the fall of capitalism and the capitalist way of life.

I landed home from Norway and Finland as exhausted as always. It's not how much I party or how many gin and tonics I drink but just the change. I live a double life - one when I'm traveling for the shows around the world, and another when I'm home and spend my time with the family and working in the studio. These two balance each other but changing between them is tough.

The first thing when I came back was to wash and vacuum clean the car, it's something that my wife would never do. My daughter loves to help in that work and because for the washing we were wearing rubber boots, it was easy to go then walking in the forest surrounding the village. Now it's the season to pick wild asparagus but I haven't learned to find them though I've been living here many years.

Today, I was back in the work and Julio Cesár came to the studio. He is writing an essay for my catalog published soon by Galeria Gacma. I showed him my drawings during three hours and then my daughter came home from the school and decided that she wanted to show him her retrospective too. Sometimes I'm not sure that it's a great idea to have the studio and the home in the same house.

Heavenly bastard in the sky, I'm disappointed with Oslo. It's the capital city of the richest oil emirate in the world but I don't see any futuristic skyscrapers or streets paved with gold. It's not like Dubai. Actually, I haven't been to Dubai and probably it's in reality as shabby as Oslo. Whatsoever, I promised to Pauliina and Jan to try to solve the puzzling nature of the hidden wealth of Norway - if I have another project here in the future. And the next time I want to eat famous Norwegian codfish and salmon, though it seems to surprisingly difficult. Yesterday, after the opening reception I was taken to have dinner to a Caribbean restaurant and told that it's difficult to find good fish in the town. If the Norwegians are so rich, why do they have to export to Spain all their seafood? Tomorrow, I'll go to El Corte Inglés and buy the best salmon grown in the Norsk fjords.

Anyways, I have had a good time here hosted by Calle, the super intern of the Finnish Norwegian Cultural Institute, where I'm showing. The most raving detail was that he took me to Holmenkollen to watch ski jumping. I also saw the striking retrospective of Bjarne Melgaard at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art.

Now I'm in the airport express train reading Wei Hui's Marrying Buddha and i forget the Scandinavian mysteries and concentrate once again in the East where the future happens.

I've always loved pre-opening lunches. Yesterday, I checked in the Riiko Sakkinen Suite (where I painted a cup noodle robot on the wall last year) of Hotel Klaus K, read few pages of the novel 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xiaolu Guo while waiting Jani. Then we went downstairs to Toscanini, ordered pasta, some Italian spicy sausages and wine and told to Jaana about our friendship for an article she writes about us for a newspaper. It was a prefect way to charge my ego with self-esteem before the inauguration of My Favorite Lists at Korjaamo, where we cabbed through the snowy and bumpy streets of Helsinki and I was about to throw up for the hangover Krista's dinner had caused me the night before.

It was nice to see my show because I had been partying and sledding the whole week and didn't spend too much time in the gallery before the opening day. It's better to let the professionals to hang the work when I don't have to do murals or installations. The choreography of the opening was normal until Janne arrived. He said that he couldn't stay more than three minutes, because his wife and kids where waiting in the car, but it was enough time for him to buy all the 22 list drawings for the Helsinki Art Museum.

After the dinner party Jani packed our friends in a minibus and we drove back to the Riiko Sakkinen suite. Sometimes, I feel that I can't complain too much. How many artists can organize an afterparty in a hotel suite they've painted?

 

I went to Arco art fair in Madrid, though I'm not a fan of the art market. Always after visiting art fairs, I feel that I don't want to be artist anymore. This time the reason to was Manuela who asked me to go to a presentation of Archivo de Creadores, which is a project of Matadero and houses fancy portfolios of 100 artists linked to Madrid, and strangely I'm included. The event was called meeting with curators but it consisted mainly about fighting in the line to get mojitos. I sat down in a corner on the carpet and finished Zizek's book. The best thing was that I got a phone call and was told that finally my new golden Chevy was ready to drive.

Today, I have have to wax the new car, learn to use the cruise control, navigator, parking radar and all the other gadgets and then teach them to my wife. She's going to use the car while I take our daughter to Helsinki, where I do a solo show called My Favorite Lists at Korjaamo. I liked a lot the list that Timo wrote about my lists:

1. Riiko Sakkinen’s lists reveal the unreal quality of our everyday life  – regardless of the things listed being real or not.

2. Riiko Sakkinen’s lists are conceptual art but they target their irony not towards institutions of art but to the structures of our society.

3. Riiko Sakkinen’s lists would be funny if they weren’t true. They are true also when they are thoroughly fictional.

4. Riiko Sakkinen’s lists tell about our desire to take over the world. In the same time revealing the hopelesness of our attempts. The lists have no end in sight.

5. Riiko Sakkinen’s lists are drawings. They can also be perceived as images.

6. Riiko Sakkinen’s lists are born independent from each other as a result of free association. Often they do consist of carefully researched, studied and organised material.

7. Riiko Sakkinen’s lists are not haphazard. Also, there is nothing haphazard in this exhibition of Riiko’s lists.

8. Riiko Sakkinen’s lists use the language the world uses. If we don’t accept what he talks about then we don’t accept the world.

9. Riiko Sakkinen’s lists are provocation. They challenge us to think the structures of our society and the inequality of people.