JAN KENNETH WECKMANComplete statement 22.10.2022 – 20.11.2022

Artist Jan Kenneth Weckman’s works exhibited at Galleria Heino were on view in an exhibition The Magic Mountain held together with artist Markku Hakuri at Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art in Vaasa, Finland from April 14th until September 11th 2022. In addition to paintings, Galleria Heinos’s exhibition will feature pigment ink prints from the series Phone drawings.

Weckman’s works combining drawing and painting are visual. They are highly scenic. Typical of Weckman, below the surface there is a wide network of references to the intellectual dimensions of art. At the same time, however, the works tangibly bring out the dimension of experientially experiencing art. Their picturesque expression, which appeals to the viewer at the emotional level, has a sense of materiality freed of the shackles of intellectualism. At the same time, their depictions of serene worlds of colour that survey lofty mountains with their structures, secret caves with their caverns and perhaps bodies of water shimmering on the horizon take thoughts to the landscapes of East Asian painting. The works show their poetic and romantic vision of the deep connection between man and nature.

The Phone drawings selected for the exhibition all refer to the Ukraine war, Russia and Soviet Union. When composing them, Weckman has used the stream of image and texts from news and social media, editing them into “screenshots” of his own mind. He has deleted, added, cropped, crossed out and underlined – in other words he has commented on the original material. The layers of image have started to enter into a dialogue with each other while the artist has put things in order in his own mind. A sense of timeless and infinite peace and harmony prevail in the works on display. In contrast, the Phone drawings tell of the instability and restlessness of our own time. They, too, had to be done.

Rauli Heino

Jan Kenneth Weckman, artist and graphic artist, Doctor of Fine Arts (b. 1946) works with drawing, painting and digital graphics. Weckman graduated from the Finnish Art Academy School in 1973. He held his first exhibition in 1969, but it was not until his exhibition in 1978 that his career as an artist really began. He has held retrospective exhibitions at the Amos Anderson Art Museum (2000) and at the Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova museum in Turku (2003). In spring 2023, his works will be seen in an extensive retrospective exhibition at the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum in Turku, Finland (10 February -21 May 2023).