LEENA KANGAS

I have painted mostly on paper for several years. Maybe it all started from the un-objectlike lightness and easily packable logistic dexterity of paper, but little by little paper’s own pliable, three-dimensional transforming character has risen above those qualities. To wrinkle, to fold, to roll up, to straighten out… many times I allow these characteristics affect the process of my painting work.

I have been fascinated by the essential nature of a sheet of paper as a page, and by its being as a part of a bigger wholeness: a stack, a book, an archive. I have painted many two-sided works. I think that even when the other side is not to be seen, in a way the work includes movement and a thought of turning the sheet. The painting manifests itself differently than just a single static piece which you hang on the wall.

I use a lot of bright primary colours - those, which you might call blue, yellow and red. Seeing pure colours delights me, as if they cleansed my eyes and my mind. For me the colours of a painting are different than the realism of the colours in the surroundings. On the other hand I also like a little suspicious combinations of colours. Those, of which you can’t quite say if they are good or just plain terrible. There’s no need to be too posh.

In my reduced, fairly abstract works I often deal with observations and memories relating to places and spaces. Recently my works have been kind of sketches of a city or a planet as well as the experience of existence in these places and reflecting from and into them. Many of my paintings have a map-like form.

Some of my works have also been affected by these unusual times, where isolation is day-to-day and touching public surfaces may be questionable.

The past has its part in hanging this exhibition. One of the exciting places in my childhood was a small acoustic room covered with perforated hardboard. It was almost nothing more than a closet and its walls were papered with posters, including especially splendid Polish ones and one photo-based Áilu Valkeapää in red and blue. I’m convinced that this place has affected my visual ideals. I still like things made of paper - the feel of paper - and it shows in the hanging of my exhibition.

I want to thank the City of Oulu and Arts Promotion Centre Finland for supporting my work.

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Observations, discoveries and side-tracks on the beach of Pikisaari in summer 2019.

During this summer The Blue Wader Case has been my site-specific working process on the beach of Pikisaari, Oulu, as a part of the Pikinen Poloku environmental art exhibition. In addition to the beach I’ve been working with the same themes in my studio in Vanha Villatehdas (the Old Wool Factory).

In mid-August I’ll build an exhibition / installation for four days from the material I’ve made and found so far. The combination includes paintings, drawings, photographs, objects. Clay, sand, glass...

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A piece of advice for those taking a journey: Bring only what you truly need.

In its unique way my exhibition is a part of that endless buzzing, where we humans — from an adequate distance the size of ants — carry our baggage on this planet here and there for a variety of reasons.

Many of the pieces of the exhibition are really nothing more than cropping and framing to events: images without images. They are surfaces for remembering and recalling. They may also be peepholes or secret windows to look through. For the first time, and again. Light and colour is what they are made of.

These works have also been affected by those pocket-sized cardboard cases with oval-shaped or rounded windows on the cover — they used to hold collages of photos of various cities and were maybe once meant to be souvenirs.

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My exhibition is an entity that can be carried under one’s arm. It travels on a hat rack of a train and then unfolds as a painting installation in a space. Paintings on paper mainly with acrylic and aquarelle colours accompanied by some folds.

The starting points of my pieces are, for example, stacks of mattress pads, the colour of an old sleeping bag and those shade-thriven misleading things that make one paint also something transparent and crystal-like when trying to reach them.

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ARKKI (Engl. sheet, ark, archaeon) was a solo exhibition with paintings in the library of Tyrnävä.

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First Light – Paintings after Winter

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Moments on no-man’s-land

New paintings. Wandering from late winter through spring and summer, ending up here.

As I started my journey I had a memory, which now I could call a map. It’s folded to the size of a small envelope, fragile when opened, red carbon paper full of small crosses. This paper, which I once found and which has intrigued me ever since, is my mother’s old embroidery pattern, a script for stitches. It has been an instrument of chores, and doesn’t really have anything to do with the world of art, but the tradition of craft and decoration. Being that, by accident, it is also a beautiful minimalistic drawing.

A theme of crosses and lattices inspired by this map or pattern recurs in many pieces of my collec-tion, and decorativeness meets plain lines also in my fringe paintings. Otherwise the scenery is changing. The red and blue dream scenery in the beginning of the journey turns into light terrain, whose paths are embroided by fallen petals. A petal is a drop, a tear, and two petals often settle as a pair of eyes, a new gaze.

As a summary, this exhibition is about the beginning and the end, and something in between. About life, that is. The small studies of colours are also called No-man’s-land. Through the history the col-ours have been, and still are, symbols of many things: countries, ideas… From the painting point of view they are however also entirely free from any meanings loaded into them, and a painter can use them in various combinations happily, enjoying. The colours belong to freedom! I like especially the bright spectra of rainbow scale.

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