JAN KENNETH WECKMANPaintings 22.11.2008 – 14.12.2008

Discussion on my exhibitions has often tended to focus on the issue of form. I have personally found it important to place my works within the context of painting for example by emphasising their manner of execution and the differentials found in them; the drawing and the painting, the figurative and the material, the illusory and the concrete.

My studio exhibition at the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art in spring 2008 was the revivalist highpoint of my interest in formalism. It was an opportunity for me to complement my thoroughly modernist works of the 1990s with a selection of new pieces, marked by a post-modern or non-linear recognition that concretism is just one fascinating genre among many others.

This current exhibition represents a departure from the old, although it too is a revival of something that would have been possible a long time ago. The series of drawn paintings from my previous exhibitions continues but my focus has now shifted to what is being drawn, what is being painted, in other words: the subject matter. Modern Painting 101 is over. It is time to start telling stories. This exhibition tells of this transition rather than any one particular story in itself.

My stories bear the title Deren, a word I invented to describe a fictional world where a painting titled The First Map of Deren forms the starting point for whatever stories might be. The legend begins with The Birth of Deren. Other works include Deren´s Nature.

So far, any themes are subsumed by the art of painting itself. I have created an early map of Deren as a point of reference for myself. By reading this map, I can begin to learn some initial facts about Deren. As yet, nothing has been committed to paper. Deren awaits writing that must start by looking. There are no stories to be heard by listening. As a word, Deren does not (yet) hold any meaning. A Google search calls up the surrealist film maker Maya Deren. This is a sheer coincidence.

My paintings are waiting to be told, to be written down, to be given a story. I personally am relieved to be moving on. Having spent the last two decades at the High School of Art, I am sure you can imagine my feelings as I stand at the school gates.

Jan Kenneth Weckman