Vesa Hjort
Higher ground
10.1.-2.2.2025
The themes of Stevie Wonder’s song “Higher Ground” include continuity, inner growth, reincarnation, one’s relationship with the world and resilience. The song can also be interpreted as a depiction of the journey of life and the transience of life. The lyrics about rebirth can be seen as regeneration that takes place during a person’s life, a process of rediscovering oneself.
While creating the works for this exhibition, I reflected on change both as the growth and transformation of an individual and as an aspect related to the creation process of the drawings and paintings. On one hand, I build my works by focusing largely on their colored nature, yet at the same time constantly weighing the representational content and essence of each image.
Due to my serial approach, both my paintings and drawings are completed over a long period, during multiple sessions and through decisions made at different times and in different states of mind. During the work period, some of the pieces are in sight at the studio, while others are hidden, only to be brought out again later. The working process thus carries the idea of rediscovery with each individual work and through the dialogue between different works.
Music has always been an important source of inspiration and starting point for my work. At this exhibition, the temporality and temporal continuity of music have influenced the visual decisions I have made. In particular, my drawing style has been influenced by the flow of music in the form of openness and temporal layers, which for me resemble the ever-evolving essence of sound waves and the changes in rhythm as a temporal event.
Vesa Hjort (b. 1971) is a visual artist based in Helsinki. Recently he has focused on acrylic painting, colored pencil and ink techniques. His works fall somewhere between representational and non-representational, making use of both purely visual elements and symbolic and existential themes.
