ARTIST STATEMENT
Beyond control
My early experiences of existential freedom were in punk concerts in an abandoned building on outskirts of Helsinki citycenter. There was thick smoke, broken beer bottles, vomit and dirty graffiti. The music and the chaos in the moshpit made me feel at peace.
When I paint I reach for this state of liberation. I choose colors, mediums and create forms relying on an impulse. I often end up ruining an aesthetic harmony I aquired while working on a previous layer of the piece. I try to regain it, while again indulging on a whim to paint or draw whatever I feel like, how ever I feel like. A finished canvas is a battle between pure expression – my individual absolution, coincidence, and my aesthetic integrity. The challenge for both me and who comes into contact with my work, is to let go and be at the mercy of this experience.
The work reveals my inner realm in an honest and vulnerable form. It is an investigation of something different than a curated, intellectual and for-others version of state of affairs. I am not one for forming a concepted story or an easily digestable image. Social media, politics, even news media push tales and appearences created for mass appeal. We feel compelled to frame our existence as stories, ourselves and lives as presentable, desireable pictures. In reality, the calculating and managing dilute us from embracing ourselves as these ultimately diverse, difficult to define creatures we really are. The false sense of control lures us from facing the world as an unpredictable, chaotic mess it is. Through my work, I propose to embrace the secluded within and celebrate the mayhem we live in. By accepting what is beyond control we grow agile to navigate. We gain familiarity with our existential terror and become more interested and empathetic towards ourselves and that around us.
