A couple of years ago Raúl asked me to send a work to a show he curated. I couldn't find it. Since then I knew that I have to order the storage of the studio. Now I'm doing it finally - and I found the work. However, the job will take many more days. I've been packing works that I guess nobody will see never, at least before I die. I'm also throwing things away - I had an impressive collection of card board boxes, pieces of bubble wrap and, for my surprise, dead mice.

Drawing = thinking. Painting = working. It's a long time since I was seriously drawing but finally this week I've dedicated few days for my favorite activity, the solid base of my whole practice.

If I don't draw, my brain rusts. In the past year, I developed a painting technique that is similar to drawing but still a large scale painting is always a big project - I need to order the wooden structure from the carpenter, buy canvas and paint, and the work takes normally several weeks. The long process makes me to choose the content carefully, there's no margin for errors. Drawing is fast and furious, an A4 piece needs approximately one day of labor and I don't have to abandon any ideas. If a drawing results really bad, I throw it to the rubbish bin.

Drawing is not only using pencils and watercolors. When I draw, I read. Yesterday my drawings made me to study Meiji restoration and Japanese history, investigate the cultural background of twerking and read poetry of Antonio Machado.

And the very best thing in drawing during the summer living in Spain - I can do it in my air conditioned home and I don't have t suffer in my sauna-studio. 

On Saturdays I listen to the Spanish Top 40 hit list while I wash my car. According to Umberto Eco the lists are the origin of culture. With them we try to make infinity comprehensible.

My mom gave me for my birthday Mia Kankimäki's wonderful book Things That Make One's Heart Beat Faster (Finnish, not translated). The author writes her own lists in the style of the Japanese Heian period poet and court lady Sei Shonagon.

MY FAVORITE BOOKS WITH LISTS

Russel Ash: The Top 10 of Everything

Jorge Luis Borges: The Analytical Language of John Wilkins (in the collection Otras Inquisiciones)

Umberto Eco: The Infinity of Lists

Erlend Loe: Naiv. Super.

Georges Perec: Species of Spaces and Other Pieces

Sei Shonagon: The Pillow Book

Artemy Troitski: Russia's Last Diversant (Finnish, not translated. Original texts from the author's blog)

Shaun Usher: Lists of Note

David Wallechinsky, Irving Wallace, Amy Wallace: Book of Lists

The summer after my graduation from the Academy of Fine Arts I did a three-month residency in London. I was hosted by Camden Arts Centre and I lived at Delfina Studios with British and international art stars. The road to success and fame seemed to be paved. Later the reality has been tougher.

One of the projects of my residency was a drawing publication - designed in collaboration with Alex Rich - which included a calendar for 2016. It was a year that was the furthest away I could imagine - when I would be turning 40. Being so absurdly old made me laugh.

I was ambitious and my goals were set very high. Next Saturday, I'll turn 40. I haven't had my works in Documenta or Venice. Of course, my career hasn't been a total failure, I've exhibited widely including one drawing once on the wall of the MoMA.

However, the art world fame doesn't mean so much to me anymore. I'm middle aged and middle class - and happy. I have a great wife and two healthy kids. My dream is to sell enough works to pay my mortgage every month. Professionally I have no higher goals than make good works. I don't care anymore about being the most famous artist of the world.

I haven't done any interesting voyage in a long time. The last research trip was almost three years ago, when I had a two-month residency in Beirut hosted by Zena. After that I've been happy to work at the studio but I know I need to see sometimes wider horizons if the themes of my practice are global.

Yesterday, I booked everything for the Border Field Trip which is an expedition to Europe's borders. One sea, two continents and three countries. I'm going to be accompanied by Pauli - I think it's very special that a museum a director travels with an artist, that's what I call a real curatorial attitude.

We'll meet in Madrid and catch a train to Algeciras in Andalucia. The first border will be Gibraltar, the Birtish enclave in Spain. We embark on a ferry in Tarifa and arrive in Africa via Tangier, the international smuggling and espionage hub in the last century. The next stop is Ceuta, one of the Spanish cities in the North African cost. This is were the border is very present, a wall separates the European Union from the rest of the world and migrants dream to cross it and not to die trying.

We need to find a driver to take us then to Melilla, the other Spanish fortress in Morocco. It will be 400 km by the small costal road. Some sources say it's controlled by drug lords and human traffickers. That's the border we are interested in.

If you want to understand the world, don't look neither the center nor the periphery but go beyond to the borders, that's were the things meet, mix and stir. It's the liquid space in between that defines the humanity from identity to politics. That's where the surmised hegemonies are challenged.