Some weeks ago, I sent my work Wetback Towel and five drawings to Hyewon for an exhibition she curates at Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury, New York. The package got lost and I've been a bit nervous about it. I can make a replica of the towel but the drawings are unique and some of the best works I've ever done.

Now Hyewon's friend found out something: The man I am working with at US Customs tells me that JFK US Customs received the package and opened it on the 30th of January. The man I spoke to does not know anything else about the package, such as whether it passed customs (it was not wise of your artist to lie about the contents), when it will be placed in the US mail for delivery, or whether it can be expedited. No point in continuing your artist's charade about a towel and documents (who sends a towel by registered mail from across the Atlantic Ocean?), as the package has been opened and inspected.

In the future I'll use FedEx and tell the truth

Now Jani and me are painting faster than de Kooning and Superman together. I suppose that we have some good energy because the studio is all the time full of friends. Today we enjoyed of the visits of Aki, Eeris, Henry, Juha-Heikki (who interviews us for the exhibition catalog), Julia, Mary Lee, Tuomas and Rosa. This is what I miss often when I'm in my periferic home studio.

Kai, the director of Amos Anderson, told that  when he presented our exhibition plans to the museum's board of directors, their faces turned white and after that red. It seems that the neoliberalist Manifesto of the Free World works perfectly. The board of directors demanded to change the press release slightly, not the content but to make sure that all the statements are written by the the artists.I think it was reasonable and I don't want Kai to lose his job.

It was a difficult to paint after all the gintonics that Eeris prepared me last night but fortunately we were occupied with the media all day.

First, I gave an interview for Vihreä Lanka, the newspaper of the Finnish Green Party. The journalist wanted to know what I think that is wrong in the world and what are my proposals for the solutions. I asked her if she prefers me to be leftwing or rightwing. It seemed that she found the question strange. Then I told her that I want to establish a global socialist dicatorship where everybody can drive a BMW (with leather and other extras). In that utopia art would be useless, unnecessary and prohibited. Obviously, I would still diasgree as usual and I would be the first person interned in a concentration camp. I think that the ideology is more important than any individual. including myself.

In the afternoon, Mika came to take photos for Elle magazine and after that we skipped one more interview for some other magazine and went to have a dinner in Sea Horse with my family. Tomorrow I begin to paint faster than de Kooning.

I arrived in the icy Helsinki on Monday night and Jani came here next morning from New York. The first thing was to clean up Jani's studio before our 10 four-square-meter and 40 kg canvases arrived. Though Jani had said that the painting size is good for the studio, I decided to measure the door. Negative results. Jani had forgotten that big paintings are not too thin, a wide surface needs a heavy structure. The best thing with Jani is that he never gets nervous. He postponed a group show that was supposed to open soon at Showroom X, the alternative exhibition space he runs, and we moved our headquarters there.

Yesterday, The Amos Anderson Art Museumhad booked for us a interview with the Gloria magazine. Jani asked his friend Mark, the manager of the Klaus K design hotel, to give us his presidential suite for the interview. Our media strategy is to act like film stars. We were waiting the journalit more than an hour, emptied the minibar and she never came. We felt really embarassed after telling to Mark how important people we are in the art world and how great publicity the hotel would get in Gloria. The only way to save face was to find immediately an impersonator. We phoned to all our suitable friends and finally our accountant Aino came and the room service brought the champagne in. I know that Mark is going to find out this sooner and later but I hope that he has enough sense of humour.

I've been felling trees and chopping wood the entire weekend. Primitive physical work in the sunny forest has been a perfect way to prepare myself for tomorrow's flight to the cold darkness of the Helsinki art world.

The Kosmostars paintings left to the North already on Thursday but that exhibition, opening the 12th of March, doesn't require too much work anymore, it's going to be a modernist painting show with white walls. The real business in Helsinki is to produce the works for Jani and Riiko's Free World, which opens in the end of March. I worked a couple of years with the ten Kosmostars canvases and now we must make the same number of works in few weeks and they are bigger. I trust in Jani who once said that no work can take more than 45 minutes to be executed.