When I had my previous show in Madrid, there were about two guests in the opening. Yesterday, the Finnish Cultural Institute was packed: some old friends, some new friends, the ambassador of Finland and many people that I didn't know. The most special guest was Totte Mannes, the matriarch of the Finnish expatriate artists in Spain.

After the opening, we ate dinner in a Chinese restaurant and washed the rice down with their scary lizard liquors. Later, I had some less scary gintonics with Manuela, Julia and Carlos. At 3a.m, I went alone to finish the party with a steak and a half bottle of wine at Vips in Gran Vía. I like nighttime eating with style. When I'm tired, I need service and comfort. No BigMacs nor döner kebaps.

I’m prepared for my vernissage tomorrow at the Finnish Cultural Institute in Madrid. I’ve polished my shoes. I have got a new suit and a new shirt. Actually, I don’t like the suit too much but I’m going to wear it anyways. It’s too wide, I’m not skinny but I think there could fit two painters in it. I bought it in the rebajas in July in El Corte Inglés. My wife says that I look really good in it, so it's better to trust her. I try to imitate the Junge Wilde style I've seen in some blurry photos from the 80’s.

I’ve packed a pile of business cards, a camera and swimming trunks, because I want to go to the Medina Mairyt Arabic baths in the aftermath of the opening, a massage is the greatest hangover treat. My wife laughs at me beacuse I plan everything so meticulously.

When I did the pharaonic work of painting Louis Vuitton monograms on the walls in my last solo show in August, I decided that the next exhibition was going to be something simple and easy. Yesterday, I installed my paintings at the Finnish Cultural Institute in Madrid – white walls and all the paintings hanging on a normal eye level. No tricks. Super modernist. Basic and boring for the most of the artists. Exotic and extravagant for me.

Martti, the director of the Institute, was drilling the walls and wearing a suit and a tie. Funny. Very Finnish. Democratic. Francis, my neighbor who was helping me, was reading the Constitution of the Republic of Finland. I was nervous and smoked too many cigarettes. Martti took us for a lunch in a snobbish and expensive restaurant. Francis and me were the only people who looked like blue-collar workers. And I ate one of the best sirloin steaks I’ve ever had.

I love my new Strawberry Cannibalism painting. Strawberry is one of the most polar ice cream tastes. Cannibalism is less popular but it is used sometimes in advertisements of different alimentary products: a pig eats ham and a figure with a tomato head bakes pizza. Culturally, cannibalism is a taboo but commercially humanoid (the pig wears jeans and has a kitchen) cannibalism is cute.

According to a decree by Queen Isabella of Castile and also later under British colonial rule, slavery was considered to be illegal unless the people involved were so depraved that their conditions as slaves would be better than as free men. This legal requirement led the conquerors to invent practice of cannibalism as it was considered evidence of such depravity.

For the inivtation card of my show in Madrid, I made two lists, one of the countries that are in the North from the Finnish point of view and another of those countries in the South. Looking from the ignorant Finland, Spain is in the South. Looking from the pretentious Spain, Madrid is very close to the center of the World.

The problem is, once again, to make people understand that the lists are not mine. I don’t do art about my opinions. I collect, register and process what other people do and say. I mix it up and make it visible. Many people believe - no idea why - that all visual art is autobiographic or testimonial. If in a novel, somebody says Heil Hitler, nobody thinks the writer is a Nazi but if I paint the same line on canvas, some people want to lynch me.