There has recently been a clear increase of images of destruction, catastrophe and war in Jaakko Niemelä's work, following themes that I associate with childhood and imagination. It would be simple to say that Jaakko Niemelä has become more political, and less personal, than before.

Yet it feels that Niemelä has throughout his production been investigating the space wherein the personal is formed, since the world is in any case always perceived through models.

Through toys and play, children learn in their mind those activities that the adult community expects of them. Toys are seldom unreasonable or wild. Perhaps that is why the war toys seem such a natural device in Niemelä's work for describing the real world situation. The constructions represent an attempt to rebuild the world that we meet every day in the media.

Niemelä is emphatic about wanting to change things and make statements. In art this is done by narrowing down ambiguity and having elements point in the same direction. Niemelä's message in his works is, for example, that violence is wrong.

But there is so much more to his work. Actually, Niemelä says that the thing he most aims at in his work is the expression of emotion. His current works tend to portray sorrow or loss: a lost childhood, history, person, life, even a lost present.

As a result of a minor manipulation of the viewing experience, the scale model becomes a physical reality. The viewer is in a space where they are looking, like the Creator, at a model which is smaller than them, and therefore subservient. But at the same time, the model also creates an overpowering environment, bigger than the viewer, and one that determines the viewer's perceptions and, above all, feelings. The sense of control and of superiority and unshakeability arising from knowledge are shaken by Niemelä's works.

Niemelä's works have always included fascinatingly complex constructions, which is probably not without metaphorical significance. The way we use the concept of 'structure' suggests that we are dealing with a fundamental way of perceiving the world. "People may talk about the structure of their relationships, how their relationship to the wife is constructed. Even the universe is supposed to have a structure. The world is becoming structured, or may very well be disintegrating and falling out of its structure, for all I know."

Because nearly all things can be seen as structures – albeit structures that always depend on the viewer – we need to ask, is there such a thing as permanent structure? That is precisely why incompleteness can be meaningful. "I'm reminded of the arc of life. When you don't get something that you would have wanted. Then you come to face the fact that you must accept incompleteness," Niemelä says.

That which seems finished now, may soon prove to be temporary. Many of Niemelä's works deal with transience that is precise as such, yet already at a distance. Something where you no longer fit or can no longer go, something that is temporary, lost.

According to Niemelä, the destruction that he often engages in in his recent work is not just negative. "I'm certain there are situations where you have to destroy things. For instance, if you have worked within some conceptual framework, which no longer works, it must be demolished. Destruction can in certain circumstances be a good thing, but it is always a sad thing, too. That is why I would like to keep at least some slightly positive mood in these works, even in destruction."

Destruction and interrupted arcs lead inevitably to dark thoughts. In spite of the generality of his model-like works, Niemelä does not wish to conceal the fact that they, above all their emotional impact, are very much influenced by his personal life. "There has been a lot of sorrow and death in my life recently. I arrived at a situation where I had to accept defeat and rebuild myself. These works, too, are in a way about the fear of death or loss, which is a familiar and arresting feeling for me these days; and age has certainly something to do with it."

The realisation and acceptance of this idea may have been contributed to by the frequent repetition of situations of control and surveillance in Niemelä's art. We watch scale models from above, as it were. Almost as if in secret, surveillance cameras reveal things from inside the models, giving us a feeling that not a single point in space or angle could remain unnoticed. Or alternatively, that from a tiny crack or window, someone is peering out, looking at us. The dramatic contrasts of the lighting set the object of perusal forth, and we are able to watch from the dark, without showing our faces. This is probably about the power of the gaze, that by looking out, by searching for evil out there, you can feel safe in here. Undoubtedly, Niemelä's works do include a political interpretation of the general circumstances of control society, but the recurring, almost manic immersion into the techniques and themes of control and surveillance suggests something more personal.

Jaakko Niemelä has recently given a lot of thought to control. "I think I've always been very much in control in whatever I do. For example, I never really processed the inevitable sorrow of my father's death. In the same way, I have left many things undone in art because they could have seemed too naive. Self-control comes from thinking that your environment thinks you should be like this or that."

There is surely a dimension of uncontrollability in play. Yet play is also a state that always contains the seeds of rules, models, learning by observation – in other words, control. War and destruction are also extreme manifestations of uncontrollability, but we might also ask, to what extent are wars the result of utilitarian structures and models made of others – these are controlled phenomena. And on an even more abstract level: To what extent is it possible for us to enter a state of uncontrollability, for might we be constructed so that, immediately upon attaining the state of play, the play turns into an introduction to a reasonable, controlled reality producing great structures that may give rise to sorrow when they break?

It is this alternation of inevitable control and liberation from it that Jaakko Niemelä seems to be processing in his works. Niemelä constructs and takes apart. Perhaps grownups can only come close to their emotions through all kinds of structures and their destruction.

Pessi Rautio
art critic, curator