Rootage - exhibition

My tenth solo exhibition opened a couple of days ago. The process that started in October finally came to an end. I've been working with these paintings after returning from Japan, settling down back to Finland and through the seasons for almost a year. Now another big circle closes as the paintings hang naked on the walls of the gallery. It's hard to put into words what this closure means to me. Now as I look at the whole body of work in front of me there's a sense of both arriving and departing, closing and starting a new circle. For sure it's the most important solo exhibition I've had so far.

Painting an ever escaping mirage forces to long for and reach out for it even when the mirage has been unreachable for a long time. The more I work the deeper the rabbit hole seems to stretch. Still I need to pursue the end of it with these images appearing as footprints or by-products from along the journey.

This time the exhibition consists of 21 mixed media paintings. The name Rootage (root, rooting, origins) refers to how painting is as inseparable from its fundamental material as humans are from nature. Like a plant, sentient life grows, reaching for the heavens, but remains intertwined with the cycle of life. The people in the paintings are returned to their origins, to that space at the juncture between matter and spirit. The paintings’ layers are the paintings’ skin – the figures’ skin, the earth’s sediments. Removing is as important as adding in mixed media paintings; the layered structure of a painting appears as absence or brokenness of something. The figure is abstract and without acquired gestures or names. Like nature, the human figure or the image represent nothing.

Rootage
Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki, Finland

September 5th - 28th

www.reimanevalainen.com
www.galerieforsblom.com


Next will be a group exhibition in Mänttä in the new annex to the Serlachius Art Museum, Gösta. It will be opening on October 10th, but more info about it later!