PAUL OSIPOWPaintings 29.10.2011 – 20.11.2011

In recent years, artist Paul Osipow has turned his attention to classic figurative subjects, such as female figures and still lifes featuring food displays as well as old stone walls and pillars found at castle ruins. His current exhibition takes its theme from ruins.

Osipow has taken numerous photographs of the Didyma sanctuary in Turkey, which he has used as a basis for his sketches prior to producing the final artwork. The different versions have allowed him the opportunity to explore his subject matter from several different angles, with the topic evolving over time. For Osipow, painting is, first and foremost, an exercise in painterly methods.

The main inspiration for these works is not history and storytelling per se. Instead they are concerned with visual language and the visual effect. The vivid and synchronised use of colour, highly characteristic of Osipow´s work, and the strong and yet delicately rendered shapes create their own particular universe.

Here, the meaning of the works, and their interpretation, are subsumed by the challenges and possibilities - or the realisations - that the act of pure visual exploration - and discovery - can achieve. For the viewer, these still life-esque works reveal themselves as a joy in their sophistication.

Rauli Heino

A true artistic heavy weight, Paul Osipow (b. 1939) graduated from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts school in 1962. In 1966, he won acclaim for his pop-art paintings at an exhibition showcasing young Finnish painters. This led to a long and distinguished career, featuring disciplined geometric and fluid abstracts as well as figurative works. He has always had a strong international orientation, explored through contacts with his colleagues and periods of study abroad. In addition to Finland, Osipow has enjoyed a high profile in other Nordic countries, including Norway and Sweden, with retrospectives in Kunstnernes hus in Oslo (2005), Pori Art Museum (1987) and the Museum of Modern Art (1993) and Amos Anderson Art Museum in Helsinki (2007).