LAURI LAINETEMPO 5.9.2026 – 27.9.2026

Colour Dressed as Time

In Lauri Laine’s oeuvre, the relationship between figure and landscape shifts subtly from one series of paintings to the next. In his new La luce series, the drapery enfolding the figures expands horizontally, now reaching the edges of the canvas, while at the same time more visibly recalling landscapes, both in composition and palette. The landscapes in this series have largely receded into pale-toned backgrounds, with the effects of light and successive coats of paint emerging most visibly across expansive fields of colour.

Over the years, Laine’s work has evolved in what might be described as the progression of a sonata. A theme and its variations are followed by new themes and their variations, which in turn comment upon what has come before. Nuances of colour carry this evolution forward, coalescing into new wholes.

Laine’s primary sources of inspiration in recent years have been Renaissance paintings, particularly those of Veneto and Venice. Modified traces of Paolo Veronese can be discerned in various details, while the moods conveyed by the figures allude to the paintings of Giovanni Bellini. These points of reference, however, are already distanced at the stage of the colour sketch. “I don’t wish to hide the sources I’m referencing,” Lauri Laine states –by which he also means that the viewer is invited to speculate, recognise, and discover them anew.

Laine’s former emphasis on verticality has given way to horizontally accented folds of drapery. In Figura in verde, the horizontal colour gradient of the background – dark-toned areas superimposed on a thin band of lead white – provides an evocative setting for the playful unfurling of the drapery. The fabric surrounding the figures responds in colour, undulating and rolling horizontally in harmony with the sweeping planes of colour that form the background landscape. Any visual dissonance is dispelled by the harmonious family of colours, while the built-up layers of paint lend the background a sense of airiness, allowing the composition to breathe. In Laine’s work, the details of the drapery are always also meditations on brushstroke and colour. Colour and light are both intriguing agents of delineation in his layered painting technique – precisely because they blur the very boundaries they establish.

Time plays many roles in Laine’s works. There is historically layered time, the time of the painting process, the tempo of colour combinations, and the lingering atmospheric effects that are evoked. Ultimately, there is also the temporal dimension inhabited by the viewer, which exists partly independently of the artist.

The viewer is presented with a challenge on two levels: to at once remember and forget the seductions of pictorial illusion. Behind the gaze, and the illusion that entices it, lies the materiality of colour, bearing the temporal traces of the painting’s process of creation.

Altti Kuusamo
(English translation by Silja Kudel.)

Lauri Laine (b. 1946) ranks among the leading Finnish painters of his generation. He has long worked not just in Finland, but also in Rome. Laine’s work has always been informed by an intimate familiarity with art history. He has been awarded The Honorary Award of the Finnish Art Society (2009) and the Pro Finlandia Medal of the Order of the Lion of Finland (2020). Laine has held numerous solo exhibitions in Finland and abroad and has taken part in many Finnish and international group exhibitions, including the São Paulo Biennial (1989) and the Beijing Biennial (2017 and 2019). His work can be found in major Finnish public collections and in collections such as the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and Malmö Art Museum.