Marianna Uutinen
Relationship to tradition?
I started off with an interest in painting’s materiality, but I have moved on from that later on. What I was especially interested in was themes like tactility and physicality, which in a way still follows me but now there are more conceptual elements in my paintings. But I am still very much into the questions of body and action.
I am not so fond of art historical categorisations. How these boxes are defined and filled is not so interesting. I have more of an ironic approach towards painting and its various modes and media. I also have a boarder perspective and attitude. I do not really see myself in dialogue so much with other painters but actually with installation artists. I do not particularly even think of myself as a painter, but as an artist who does a lot of different things, a kind of a mixed case. The connections are often anecdotal, for example, I relate strongly to the type of humour of Mike Kelley. The connections are always based on content, not formal matters.
Possibilities of painting?
Well, I see them, in fact, in the possibilities of shifting and relocating the paradigms of painting. It is most of all about the context of painting. I am thinking of certain painterly gestures, fast and direct observations. Or to put it other terms, I am thinking of a certain kind of virtuality within painting. This might sound like strange Disney-version of painting, but seriously speaking, I am talking about the notions of directness and presence when doing a painting. It is not about some 3-D figure, but a given type of fictionality which painting allows.
Of course in some ways what I do has changed a great deal since I did my first solo exhibition in 1989, but at the same time there is continuity. Perhaps I have added more narrative elements into the paintings, but more or less my painting are still about small and often banal processes of recognition. This is apparent in the materials that I use. Some canvases, for example, refer to glitter, glam and disco, and it is through these connotations and connections that I try to communicate.
The question of actuality of painting?
Even if my style of producing might be fast, I do strongly believe that the work before that, the thinking and the choices one makes, must be present in the results. You have to be able to see the time and effort invested in them. This brings me to the important ambivalence that exists in my paintings and in my approach. It is simultaneously very speedy and slow. I use this kind of a snap-shop aesthetics, in which it is not so interesting what you do and depict but how you do it.
In other words, the fast part is the impressions, and making of the connections. Then the slow part is the painterly side, how to bridge the gap between the works and the viewer. The meeting with the viewer is slow, and for me therein lies the whole thing. It is about how to shape and stop that given moment, a certain feeling and also certain kind of sense of recognition.
What are you reading?
Well, I have actually read quite a lot, both various type of literature and theoretical stuff. When I was younger Beat literature was important, names like William S. Burroughs, especially his sarcasm and cut-up technique that I have used in my own works. It is funny how this relates to the fact that I am not able to finish books. I just cannot concentrate on linear story telling with a solid plot and clear ending. I always pause on minor details, and destroy the wholeness in my mind, focusing on fragments. And this is very close to the process how I paint.
Artist’s morality?
I think the task of the artist is to question conventions and the way people are manipulated.
Relationship to the chosen subject and themes in your works?
I can say that it is not critical, because that always ends up eating its own tail. My attitude is irony, focusing on the banal, the clichés and the kitsch. I try to reach towards some kind of version of truth through these roads, through facing and confronting matters that seem banal and unimportant. This functions both on the level of content and materials; such as the acrylic paint, straight from the shelves of shops selling plastic items. There is also strong connection to the field of fashion and commercials. My technique is very much the style of do-it-yourself, there is nothing fancy about it. And that is why it is also so challenging.
Autobiographical elements?
Yes, sure. I do, of course, relate through individual position towards general views and claims. The starting point is quite often tragic, a certain kind of loser attitude. This is not so straightforward, but again very ambivalent, continuously changing sides and positions. For me it goes back to the questions of gender, and the ambiguity related to that. I do not have a very strong sense of identity in terms of gender.
This ambivalence is apparent in my paintings and their themes. When I do paint, for example, images of panties, I see them always as being both-and. They are at the same time object and subject, something one watches and but also something that actively acts back. It relates to the rather common notion of how painting starts to push and pull, how it answers back when you make it. So what I am after is these both sides, and the interaction in-between them.
Mika Hannula
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