MARKUS RISSANENTutti Frutti 5.1.2013 – 3.2.2013

Tutti Frutti

The themes of my paintings have always been connected, one way or another, with nature, although my experience of nature is probably different to what people usually mean when they talk about experiencing nature. To me, nature has always meant all the scientific laws that objectively describe how the world works, rather than a separate area isolated from human culture.

My most recent works are also linked to a different, more existential, experience. Nature is not merely something that exists beyond culture or something that exists conceptually through it; as people, we too are part of the endless cycle of nature. In Greek mythology the personified deities Hypnos (Sleep) and Thanatos (Death) are the children of Nyx (Night). Throughout history people have attempted to understand and to manipulate the forces that regulate nature. It is somewhat surprising to realise how, like mythology, science and magic share common origins; the models that explain both assume that invisible forces influence and operate in the background behind observable phenomena. Thus many scientific, mythological and magical concepts of nature are semi-intentionally present or referred to in many of my works. The name of my exhibition: Tutti Frutti is part of this plurality.

A book of the same name will be published to accompany the exhibition. While this catalogue does not describe all of the fruits of my labours over the past twelve years, it is a comprehensive cross-section of my art work to date. Although the works in the exhibition are new, undoubtedly a kind of retrospective consciousness of the works of past years in the background has had a more powerful effect than ever before. I have numbered all my paintings ever since I graduated from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and when I was painting the works for this exhibition I noticed that I had just passed number 144. This number seems very appropriate in this context as I was going through, month by month, everything that I had created in the last twelve years. 12 x 12 = 144. In fact one of my paintings directly reflects some of the works from the twelve years that precede it.

Markus Rissanen