Marika Mäkelä
07 Sep - 01 Oct 2006
MARIKA MAKELA
"On New Ground"
"That one," says Marika Mäkelä pointing to large canvas with a yellow ground, " is the gate leading out of my previous world."
Were one to look at the painting with that in mind, its central motif could display distinct affinity with the imagery of Mäkelä's two previous exhibitions. The framing relief is raised, unlike in any other works in the present showing.
When an artist feels that he or she has taken a new step, moved to a new stage, the power of that experience makes it necessary to seek proof: that's where it happens; that's where I came from.
A viewer knowing nothing about the artist's quest or its difficulties can see differently in his or her own search, and can also note continuity.
Unlike ever before, or at least for a long while, Marika Mäkelä felt the need to make sketches from which to begin constructing her new world. She applied dark drawing ink on paper, drew designs for the pleasure of doing so, and created ten or so sketches that are works of art in themselves. .
Networks of roads or waterways, models of three-dimensional structures, forms dancing or wrestling, ponds of darkness retreating or expanding threateningly - imagine what old Rorschach could find in them. The suggestive power of the designs competes with the sheer feel of material: the artist has applied colour like a thick sauce.
And as markedly as free rein seems to have defined the work, the simultaneously soft and strong curves of the lines, the harmonious, or should one say trusting, asymmetry of designs, are characteristics of Marika Mäkelä's hand, ones that endure while being renewed.
Viewed alongside the artist's polychrome paintings on panel, the works on paper could be described as impulses rather than sketches. The forms have emerged through developing the themes, also largely upon the terms of the chosen material. Already in the 1980s, Mäkelä occasionally used wood as the ground for her paintings, but in the present exhibition she gives more room to its specific properties.
Wood is a living surface that absorbs oil paint to some degree and takes on colour in beautiful ways. Despite the boldness of tones and contrasts and the drama of markedly recorded visual motifs, there is softness in the overall impression. The grain of the unplaned wood forms ridges, casting shadows in light from the side. Shadows this thin are perceived only as a kind of ripple when we or the light moves, and as a particular succulence of the dark planes of colour, for example in works such as Gravity and Grace and Skeleton.
Motifs incised in the ground colour stand out not only chromatically but also as grooves, with the sharpness of their angles affecting the softness or hardness of shadow.
"Look". Mäkelä lifts Waterway next to The Officer's Daughter. Both works have a design in silver on a white ground. "It doesn't take much, but they're nonetheless like two different worlds. In this smaller one the white is white and the silver is cold. In that large one even the silver is warm."
Yellow primer partly gleams through the ground colour of the large canvas, more clearly in some places and only as a vaguely warm hue in others. Along with impressions of depth, the changes in the ground colour suggest associations of patina, the impact of time as if it were crystallized in the moment of seeing.
Marika points to the circular designs formed by a line winding in a slightly jerking manner that also appear in the large yellow canvas Elle vit apparaître le matin.
"It's not for nothing that this one is called The Officer's Daughter. Those are the rosettes of uniform collar badges. My father was an officer, and I thought he was the most handsome man in the world when he would come home dressed in his uniform. My mother always wore a housecoat, so there wasn't much competition. No wonder she never let me or my sister wear skirts, because she thought she was the only with legs worth showing."
Marika Mäkelä spent her childhood at the same army base in Oulu as her fellow artist Hannu Väisänen. The dominance of uniform grey and order provided basic experiences to which both artists reacted in their own way.
"Gypsies would sometimes come to our door to sell something. My mother had to run after them and get me, because I hung on to their clothes and I wanted go with them. Their jewellery and dresses and gold sequins were so lovely! "
Mäkelä has made recurrent use of tones of silver, for example in contrast to intensive blue, but gold has also appeared from time to time among her motifs. In the compositions of her new works, gold colour is not so much an eye-catcher as a lyrical element dampened in one way or another that even seems to contain the glow of sunset or memory, as in the temples of the skull-like figure in Painter's Head.
A late summer Saturday, the studio flooded with the afternoon light. Marika Mäkelä stands in the middle of the floor looking around her. She is tired yet happy, like the Moomin family after their big August celebration.
"And this one!" Marika turns to point at a work alone on its own wall. "I decided that there wouldn't be any red works in this showing. But when this one started to come, I thought that I'd make it as red as ever. It's even called Red is red is red. "
Martti Anhava
© Marika Mäkelä
RED IS RED IS RED, 2006
oil on wood
180 x 180 cm
"On New Ground"
"That one," says Marika Mäkelä pointing to large canvas with a yellow ground, " is the gate leading out of my previous world."
Were one to look at the painting with that in mind, its central motif could display distinct affinity with the imagery of Mäkelä's two previous exhibitions. The framing relief is raised, unlike in any other works in the present showing.
When an artist feels that he or she has taken a new step, moved to a new stage, the power of that experience makes it necessary to seek proof: that's where it happens; that's where I came from.
A viewer knowing nothing about the artist's quest or its difficulties can see differently in his or her own search, and can also note continuity.
Unlike ever before, or at least for a long while, Marika Mäkelä felt the need to make sketches from which to begin constructing her new world. She applied dark drawing ink on paper, drew designs for the pleasure of doing so, and created ten or so sketches that are works of art in themselves. .
Networks of roads or waterways, models of three-dimensional structures, forms dancing or wrestling, ponds of darkness retreating or expanding threateningly - imagine what old Rorschach could find in them. The suggestive power of the designs competes with the sheer feel of material: the artist has applied colour like a thick sauce.
And as markedly as free rein seems to have defined the work, the simultaneously soft and strong curves of the lines, the harmonious, or should one say trusting, asymmetry of designs, are characteristics of Marika Mäkelä's hand, ones that endure while being renewed.
Viewed alongside the artist's polychrome paintings on panel, the works on paper could be described as impulses rather than sketches. The forms have emerged through developing the themes, also largely upon the terms of the chosen material. Already in the 1980s, Mäkelä occasionally used wood as the ground for her paintings, but in the present exhibition she gives more room to its specific properties.
Wood is a living surface that absorbs oil paint to some degree and takes on colour in beautiful ways. Despite the boldness of tones and contrasts and the drama of markedly recorded visual motifs, there is softness in the overall impression. The grain of the unplaned wood forms ridges, casting shadows in light from the side. Shadows this thin are perceived only as a kind of ripple when we or the light moves, and as a particular succulence of the dark planes of colour, for example in works such as Gravity and Grace and Skeleton.
Motifs incised in the ground colour stand out not only chromatically but also as grooves, with the sharpness of their angles affecting the softness or hardness of shadow.
"Look". Mäkelä lifts Waterway next to The Officer's Daughter. Both works have a design in silver on a white ground. "It doesn't take much, but they're nonetheless like two different worlds. In this smaller one the white is white and the silver is cold. In that large one even the silver is warm."
Yellow primer partly gleams through the ground colour of the large canvas, more clearly in some places and only as a vaguely warm hue in others. Along with impressions of depth, the changes in the ground colour suggest associations of patina, the impact of time as if it were crystallized in the moment of seeing.
Marika points to the circular designs formed by a line winding in a slightly jerking manner that also appear in the large yellow canvas Elle vit apparaître le matin.
"It's not for nothing that this one is called The Officer's Daughter. Those are the rosettes of uniform collar badges. My father was an officer, and I thought he was the most handsome man in the world when he would come home dressed in his uniform. My mother always wore a housecoat, so there wasn't much competition. No wonder she never let me or my sister wear skirts, because she thought she was the only with legs worth showing."
Marika Mäkelä spent her childhood at the same army base in Oulu as her fellow artist Hannu Väisänen. The dominance of uniform grey and order provided basic experiences to which both artists reacted in their own way.
"Gypsies would sometimes come to our door to sell something. My mother had to run after them and get me, because I hung on to their clothes and I wanted go with them. Their jewellery and dresses and gold sequins were so lovely! "
Mäkelä has made recurrent use of tones of silver, for example in contrast to intensive blue, but gold has also appeared from time to time among her motifs. In the compositions of her new works, gold colour is not so much an eye-catcher as a lyrical element dampened in one way or another that even seems to contain the glow of sunset or memory, as in the temples of the skull-like figure in Painter's Head.
A late summer Saturday, the studio flooded with the afternoon light. Marika Mäkelä stands in the middle of the floor looking around her. She is tired yet happy, like the Moomin family after their big August celebration.
"And this one!" Marika turns to point at a work alone on its own wall. "I decided that there wouldn't be any red works in this showing. But when this one started to come, I thought that I'd make it as red as ever. It's even called Red is red is red. "
Martti Anhava
© Marika Mäkelä
RED IS RED IS RED, 2006
oil on wood
180 x 180 cm