Tiina Nevanperä: Sense & Sensibility – Research on Experience
Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari, Projektitila
22.8.-31.8.2014
Avajaiset ja ohjelmaa torstaina Taiteiden yönä 21.8. klo 18-. Tervetuloa!
I have examined my work and paintings as if I were walking on foreign ground. As if I had been turned up-side down numerous times; as if my works had popped out of my insides and unfurled yet again and again, revealing their endless strangeness and foreignness. Patterns and rhythms have kaleidoscopically changed after numerous scrapings, deletions and obliterations. It has been difficult for me to define the basis of my works. I realize that their clumsiness and inadequacy bother me. Often I feel ashamed and horrified by my works. At the same time I have become naked to myself, thus perhaps even ridiculous. It is a torment to see myself in my works. Is it true that the image never lies? Yet I have occasionally experienced a sense of the fleeting and fading moment of perfection. It is at that moment that I have truly felt alive.
It is true that each of my works is imperfect. But even though there is no ranking by which I could judge my paintings, I realize that I analyze both them and myself through my works. I work not only to paint a master-piece but also to feel myself at work, feeling how the treatment of materials and the movements of my body unite to become an experience – my experience. Nobody else’s experience could possibly suffice for me.
I sit at a chair in my stained painting clothes. I stare at an unfinished work that leans against the wall. Two other works lie on the ground. I sip some tea. I stare at the work as if it were an unknown truth that embraces me: the grand illusion. An overwhelming force, emotion, thought arises in my body, urging me to continue the work with a liver pâté color. Another voice inside my head shouts: think again, liver pâté will affect eve-rything around. I take a deep breath. I rise up from the chair. I go and mix the liver pâté and start vigorously applying it on the canvas, covering the color of an overripe banana underneath. Is it wrong to give a color to “a thing”? After all, the painting is not about the color alone, even though they say I am a colorist.
I started my artistic research because my artistic activity and the issues arising from it, a sense of inadequacy and shame in particular, as well as the themes revolving around them presented themselves as a demand to begin it. In the early stages of my research I felt like I was progressing without any logic. Little by little, however, anxiety and confusion have vanished and I have learnt how to think with emotion. Yet I still won-der: how can I be sure not to go astray?
I see everything that I have done, felt and thought during my research, and I don’t see it. Everything that I have done during the past years spreads out in front of me: all the straying, madness and complete ignorance. I try not to feel the goal; I stumble in half-light without knowing where the “essence” of my research is hid-den. It is extremely difficult to direct one’s path. Who am I when I paint? I play hide-and-seek with myself. My research advances like a game of mirrors, its goal is to become mirror instead of the mirror. The mirror must always be honest.
Working is about expressing oneself. Also research is about expressing. Expression is inevitable. My re-search method has emerged in the course of the research with art as the basis. My research approach does not know any boundaries between art and science. My research is divided into two parts, an artistic one and a theoretical one, but the borderline between them is blurred. And in my research there has always been a question lurking at the background: what is research? My exhibition in the Project Room of Galleria Huuto is an opportunity to approach research on experience.
I thank my supervisor Mari Rantanen and my friends for their unconditional support during my research journey.
Tiina Nevanperä is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Art at Aalto University’s School of Arts, De-sign and Architecture.
24.8.2014 Maalatessani etenen askel askelta. Etenen, enkä tiedä vielä mihin. Mitä loistavin tilaisuus tutkimiseen: maalaaminen on tietoisuutta loputtomista mahdollisuuksista. Tämä ei ole kuitenkaan mitenkään ahdistavaa, vaan herättää minussa loputtoman uteliaisuuden ja tiedon janon. Maalauksen pääsisältö ei ole aineellinen taideteos, jokin kuvituksen kaltainen, vaan mittaamattomaksi ja abstraktiksi muuttunut kokemuksen ja materiaalin tuntu juuri tässä ja tällä hetkellä. Maalaaminen on todistus kaiken äärettömyydestä ja siitä sillä on todellakin ja vuosituhansien ajoilta paljon kerrottavaa. Jokaisella maalarilla on oma koordinaatistonsa, jokin sisäinen navigointisysteemi, omat laatuvaatimuksensa, mutta silti maalaaminen on jatkuvassa epävarmuudessa elämistä eikä sitä voi koskaan kokonaan hallita. Mitään valmista uraa ei ole. Toivon, että herkkyyteni ei koskaan katoa.
