ALVAR GULLICHSENThe Fabric of Space 3.11.2024 – 24.11.2024

Those who can, see - New works by Alvar Gullichsen

The English writer John Ruskin (1819–1900) once wrote: “Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see.” Artists are often those who can see. Alvar Gullichsen is a versatile visual artist who has consistently changed his artistic expression every 10 years throughout his career. It's now again time for something new.

The artist, who has spent more than a decade perfecting his abstract paintings that feel like 3D views, is changing direction just as the public is beginning to realise what he’s doing. Randomness has now joined the planned and cool abstract universe. The new paintings combine two seemingly contradictory styles of painting, as the sprinkling technique meets tape painting. Gullichsen paints his works in different sections: taping, painting, removing the tapes and painting in another way. He also uses old bases on which he has cleaned his brushes and left marks in the process.

The combination of tape painting, which is associated with discipline and planning, and the sprinkling technique, which is directly expressive, arouses the viewer's fascination and wonder: how is it possible to combine two such different worlds? The combination is intoxicating in its freedom. Gullichsen's new paintings are free and express genuine randomness, as the artist himself says.

The German-born American modernist artist Josef Albers (1888-1976), in a lecture presented at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 1965, quoted John Ruskin and urged people to: learn to see. The idea behind Albers' instructions was that observation alone is not enough if you do not use your imagination. In other words, even the most elaborate planning cannot overcome imagination, and the importance of chance. In the same lecture, Albers urges young artists to use their favourite colours in their work, as well as those they shun.

Gullichsen's paintings testify to the artist's freedom and ability to choose expressions that are stylistically and conceptually like night and day. But in Alvar Gullichsen's world, they both fit into the same work and tell us how free a person is when they learn to see with their own eyes. The artist wants to pay tribute to his diverse interests and experiences with new works that reflect the importance of Villa Mairea, built for his grandparents Harry and Maire Gullichsen, and modernism for the young Gullichsen, but also the artist's current interest in psychedelia.

By combining two different visual worlds, Alvar Gullichsen offers the viewer a holistic experience that is far greater than the sum of its parts. Chaos and discipline are experiences that, when combined, allow us to see two different realities. This, if anything, implies an expansion of consciousness and experience. Gullichsen has changed his work to open up to something new, something which makes others see when they encounter it.

Juha-Heikki Tihinen, PhD