Shadows
Makasiini Contemporary, Turku, Finland, 2019
Tiina Pyykkinen’s reflective, polychromatic, site-specific works do not let the viewer off easily. The observer is one with the painting; as the viewer moves, the work is transformed in both its colour and content, since both the people around it as well as the surrounding space are reflected in it. The large-format paintings irritate the visual sense intentionally and undermine the relationship between knowledge and perception.
Pyykkinen creates multi-layered dimensions in which the forms disintegrate, creating a feeling of motion, chaos or simultaneity. The observer also mixes their own mirror image with what is seen, and this together with the above-mentioned disturbing factors creates an immediate physical experience. In this way Pyykkinen seeks to prompt the viewer to move when facing the painting.
The feeling of repetition is unavoidable in these works, in which the tones and colours create an atmosphere, the layers are compacted on top of one another, and the moment spent in front of the painting binds it to the time and place. The works are present in the current moment, while also being bound to the past, through both the pictorial motifs and the superimpositions.
Concealment and revelation, along with impermanence and continuity, are pairs of opposites that Pyykkinen plays with, inviting the viewer to join in. The mirror wall in the exhibition copies the works and the entire gallery space, turning the exhibition into a total installation, in which each individual component exists in relation to the others through the motion and the light. The uncontrollability of the paintings is accentuated in this installation, since the life and the people around it are reflected endlessly through the mirror and the works, generating a boundless, endlessly changing repetition.
