We are consumed by nature
in the same way as nature is consumed by us. Mutual erosion is
inevitable. We form a landscape. The landscape resembles a body. It's
lying on the surface of the earth, hands growing out of it, towards
space. The human skin, the earth's crust, the layers of a painting –
they are worn out, they have been used well. On the road and in the
gardens, faces and flowers wither away. Names change but heartlands
remain.
Another year spent in the
studio, another year spent learning how to see. What's the most
private space for me, is yet again, open to the public
eye. Not private in the common sense though, it's a dimension where
I'm at peace, a place where I've been walking and lying down, a place
that I've defined. In short, an exhibition is a collection of
footprints. Exhibitions are mere vertical cuts into the flow of
painting. And because of that there are many different themes that
might come together in the end. Or they might not. Maybe it doesn't
look like it to the viewer but I feel like I've been making many
different lines of work simultaneously through the years. I'm in this
for life, making one lifelong retrospective rather than different
kind of exhibitions for every year. I'm slowly building my own
imperfect, clumsy temple. Hopefully in the end, the red lines
connecting the works can be seen, the unity of different windows
revealed.
This year's paintings
partly continue the idea of representing substance with pattern
rather than through material. I've been exploring the contrast
between a surface that evokes a tactile feeling of matter and two
dimensional textures made by simple markings, dots or lines. The
textures can be seen as immaterial sensations like sounds or light,
something you know is there even though it's not tangible or visible.
However, this is only one of the ways of painting I'm interested in.
My work consists of mixed media, but rather than using it to create a
strong effect or a contrast to the traditional use of paint, it has
simply become the most natural means to create an image for me. I aim
for subtlety in both color and texture creating a surface where also
the viewer can lose the sense of time. The things I want to tell you
I'd rather whisper than shout.
Before adding paint I
cover the canvas with a layer of paper. The collage and mixed media
techniques I've been using since art school suit my thinking well, as
the working itself is thinking by hands. Painting is simply about
adding and removing layers and through collage this layered third
dimension is made clearly visible. The collage technique makes not
just adding but also removal of layers possible, and it does it in a
very fine-textured way.
I start the painting with
my mind filled with doubt, but the doubt doesn't come from a lack of
ideas or mistrust in my skills. Rather, my head is filled with
impressions and pieces of images. The possibilities of the painting
are overwhelming in the beginning. Only after a certain threshold
towards the end, after the image stops fighting back, does it get
easier and somewhat enjoyable. But by then a lot has been lost both
as the torn off layers of the painting and as images that have been
forgotten. Thematically the sense of oblivion and absence are in the
center of my work too. It's the forgetting of names, meanings and
habits. Nature is abstract and nameless, it doesn't represent
anything. Maybe you can see a face on an abstract form, but can you
see the abstract behind your own face?
I paint quite fast trying
to keep up with the fleeting images and often end up making drastic
changes to the work at hand. Sometimes it's simply because of my
impatience and frustration but often it's because of a learned
mechanism. I believe that to become a good painter I have to be ready
to let go of both good and bad. This kind of thinking leads into
images where all the forms have gone through a rigorous process of
testing if they really work, if they are real and right. Even things
that I've worked on for hours have to go through the test and
sometimes be destroyed. I have to make sure it's right because it
might be my last painting. I want to get it right when I still have
the chance. But in the end I can't rest in any certainty or trust in
my knowledge or perception. I'm to rely on the fact that I can't keep
up with the fluid reality, I can only produce images that are, in a
way, broken. From longing to exhaustion, all that is left after the
painting is finished is just an image, an attempt.
The human being in my
paintings is not just a part of nature and animal kingdom but also a
part of the natural cycle. If there is emotion, it's ecstasy and
catharsis coming from the realization of this fact. Or there is no
emotion at all. I often refer to my work being something that is not
created but what remains. More than expression, my work is about
searching. I'm looking for what lies underneath when all the layers
and properties are stripped off, in the nameless heart. Rather than
indulging in the cold facts of life that is characteristic to
expressionism, I want to look for a fine balance between the two
extremes without being lukewarm.
My work lies somewhere
between human and nature, abstraction and form, light and darkness.
The ascetic world that I'm after has maybe started from a vision or
something visible but often it ends up being a world that evokes
other type of sensations through eyes. When I look at paintings by
others I'm most interested in the friction between the clumsy matter
and the nimble vision, the intention and the outcome, the taming of
matter. I don't use reference images as I'm working, so everything is
dependent on memory. And often the image is put together from pieces
of different impressions and memories that I find myself being
obsessed about. It's funny how clothing that seemed like a separate
being on some passerby becomes a lifelong search. Or how the
impression of trees and people making a network of sounds into the
landscape really starts taking a significant part of one's everyday
life. For me all the sensory impressions are the origin for the
image, not just the ones received through eyes. Painting is a
rigorous study of reality through uncertain senses.
Reima Nevalainen, 2018
My exhibition Heartlands is open until 28th October at Galerie Forsblom, Stockholm. Welcome!
- Gallery's page for the exhibition
- All the paintings from the past year at my homepage
Here are some installation and detail photos:
