Site-specific sculpture sourced and conceived similarly to how the restaurant works: harvesting natural ingredients locally. The size and weight of this piece of a boulder creates a solemn atmosphere around it. It’s a vision of nature as something elemental as opposed to nature as “decor” like in most restaurants. The rock has a warm tint to red and as a part of the furniture, it has a certain coziness to it – although it is also totally crude, indifferent and independent.

As a part of the restaurant’s interior, the sculpture is used for “place-making”. I took this opportunity to work in the vein of Robert Smithson’s “Non-site” gallery pieces. In this case I reconstructed another place (literally bringing the land from elsewhere) and created a place in its own right. In the footsteps of Smithson, I am using the most blunt material of rocks to discuss the complex between the sign and the thing being signified.

The name is a play on the name of the neighbourhood Kallio, which translates to ‘rock’ or ‘bedrock’.