Vesa Hjort
Of Light and Lightness
Paintings
25 June–18 July 2021
On Midsummer Day Sat 26 June the gallery is closed.
Sun 27 June the artist is present in the gallery at 12-17.
The landscape paintings in the “Of light and lightness” exhibition deal with the area between the external and internal, visible and invisible world. Serving as the structural spine of the works, the landscape reflects what is going on in the internal world.
I believe that seeing is always a combination of a person’s internal world and perception of the view in the external world. When looking at a landscape, we do not see it purely as it is. Instead, our perspective acts as a filter. Seeing is about knowing, experiencing, establishing a relationship through emotions. It is about focusing your eyes on something and simultaneously not seeing something else.
When creating the paintings for the exhibition, at first there was nothing but emptiness. Emptiness as lightness, as a silent floating space filled with light. As a landscape and, on the other hand, as a canvas where all possibilities still exist. During the painting process, my aim was to stick to the original emptiness and lightness. Paradoxically, my aim was to paint as if I was not painting. My aim was to turn the physical paint that was spread on the canvas into such a form that it would begin to live a life of its own. Into a form where the paint is so expressionless that it becomes immaterial.
The paintings are views where the thought of light and lightness serves as a uniting factor. Light is the starting point and the goal for the paintings. It is also the dream that includes an idea of positive emptiness.
The landscape in the paintings is a place of silence and searching. An image of a space that takes the form of our external world.
