Riikka Latva-Somppi, Nightingale, 2009. Painted and Gilded Glass, Bronze. W 164 feet.
If you happen to be sitting on a bench in Helsinki, Finland, and see a small bird perched beside you, do not be surprised if it doesn’t take notice. You may just be sitting next to a work of art.
The small, bronze nightingale and bench is only part of the piece entitled Satakieli Näktergalen (Nightingale) by visual and glass artist Riikka Latva-Somppi. Behind and above the bench, 164 feet of printed and gilded glass line the outside of a pedestrian walkway. In shades of blue and black, the silhouettes depict nightingales flying among thinning trees, whose branches are just beginning to bud.
“This multi-faceted piece that marries different materials forms a fluent dialogue with architecture and the environment,” said Marjatta Erwe, chairwoman of The Foundation For Environmental Art delegation that awarded this work its annual Certificate of Honor for Environmental Art. In her speech at the awards ceremony in Helsinki last February, Erwe said: “The subtle, even romantic work does not try to replace authentic nature, but reminds us of its non-existence. The art work, in its multiple visual elements, is like the song of a nightingale, resonating vividly in the solid building.”
A closer look at one of the glass panels of Nightingale.
Perhaps Ms. Erwe was correct in her assessment that Nightingale does not try to replace nature, but, because of its placement on the side of a building, is meant to remind us of the quickly fading natural world. The silhouettes evoke a loneliness, an emptiness, and a sense that nature is slowly slipping away as we continue to embrace the hard, the concrete, and the man-made.
Yet the power of Nighingale is not just in its large-scale depictions of the trees that can easily be seen from across the street. Up close, the small details of the piece are just as poignant.
Printed on a glass panel behind the bench is a quotation from Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale from which this artwork takes its name. In the “Nightingale” story, the Emperor of China is enraptured by the sounds of a singing nightingale, and takes it into captivity. When he is presented with a mechanical nightingale, the Emperor releases the real one. The mechanical one later breaks down, and on his death bed, it is the real nightingale which revives him back to life.
The Nightingale that perches atop the bench, underneath the facade of the walkway.
With the integration of this beloved story into the piece, Latva-Somppi just may be making a statement about how, in our embrace of new technologies, we may have tossed the real nightingale aside and have become obsessed with a new, mechanical world, delaying the inevitable day when it will break down, leaving us yearning for the real thing.
—Paul Travisano