JORMA HAUTALA: PAINTINGS, GRAPHICS (exhibition at Galerie Anhava)

Galerie Anhava 10 Jan - 3 Feb 2008. Visited on 27 Jan, 2008. Jorma Hautala's acrylics: Wing - Shadow (2006), Wing - Reflection (2006), Dance in Light (2006), Dance in Dark (2006), One Other Glass of Wine (2005), Marked (2007), Helios (2006), Duo (2006), Rondo (2006), Sounding Forest II (2005), Walking Music I (2005), Walking Music II (2005), Road Movie II (2006), Road Movie I (2006), Night Wind (2007), Morning Wind (2007), lithographs: Tango III (2007), Tango V (2007), Tango VI (2007), Tango VII (2007). Kimmo Pasanen's catalogue essay "The Pulse of Space and Light": "Jorma Hautala's purely abstract paintings present the viewer with an interesting challenge. Looking at the world around us, or pictures of it, our mind immediately seeks to identify the objects of the gaze: houses, trees, stairs etc. Identification is also naming; we can describe verbally what we see. Such identifiable features are rare in abstract painting; there are only dots, lines and coloured surfaces. This is also the case in Hautala's works. At the same time, however, they contain something else, something that cannot be named, that we cannot express in words. Having set out to identify something, our gaze is lost and we are confused. From its initial stages, abstract art has sought to liberate itself from making reference to surrounding and visible reality, and has therefore always been perplexing and outright difficult to perceive for the unaccustomed viewer. How then should such paintings be viewed? Should we be satisfied with only seeing more or less pleasant ornamental designs in them? In ornament, details as such have no individual nature, no "identity", being instead interchangeable with others that are similar, without diminishing or altering decorativeness as a result. The "danger" of ornamentality has, in fact, been a threat to abstract art since its very beginning, and among others Wassily Kandinsky, one of Jorma Hautala's paragons, had to consider for long its possibility in his own art. A look at Hautala's paintings, however, soon reveals that despite certain repeated graphic motifs, the works are not decorations, for the role of their elements is clearly not to create a pleasant impression, nor can they replaced by other elements. They are carefully chosen and placed in the entity of the painting, and they cannot be removed or altered without altering or even breaking down the work itself. What then should our gaze be seeking? The answer is that our gaze should not seek anything! On the contrary, we should allow the gaze and the mind to rest and permit ourselves to be led by the work, not as passive followers but as active and receiving participants. In doing so, the rhythm of composition of the work and the beat created by its graphic elements, such as dots and lines, and the space and mood created by the colours are perceived by the receptive gaze and mind as a living and continuously changing entity in the strong sense of the word. The viewer enters a world that can only be created with the means of painting and the gaze directed at it. The artwork is ultimately created only when it begins to take shape in the viewer's mind.
This also places requirements on the viewer. According to conventional thinking, pictures and artworks depicting reality should be of such a nature that the viewer can recognize their content immediately, at first glance. Abstract art has separated itself from this recognizability, and the viewer has to make a conscious effort to steer his or her mind in the right direction. The more accustomed the viewer is to this, the more easily and sensitively will the gaze and mind be put in a receptive state. Abstract art is truly "different" art. Its contribution lies in the endless interaction of the gaze and its object. Looking at our surroundings, or for instance a photograph of them, the recognition of things that are seen satisfies in a sense the gaze and the mind: we have understood the significance of our visual perception. The gaze and the mind will then move on to consider other objects - unless perception launches some other related action. An abstract painting cannot be "exhausted" by this manner of reading, for as a whole it lies beyond conceptual and linguistic recognition and consequently it carries on its existence as a kind of enigma for as long as the gaze is directed at it and each time this happens. Of course a figurative work may do this, but figurativeness introduces a great number of "exhausting" recognizable elements leading towards a reading of the work. We might add that an abstract painting has succeeded when it retains its enigmatic nature. Hautala's paintings are successful abstract paintings.
Hautala's paintings are also accessible and even viewer-friendly. Their calm aesthetic greatly aids the gaze and mind to let themselves be led by the world of the work. The multi-layered space created by Hautala is intimate, close, and within it the pulse of black and white points subtly creates the boundaries of the space in depth. The vertical division of space receives viewers with their heads upright, allowing their minds to move into the space of the painting, constructed with contrasts and colour and value. Because of them, spaces may change place; the space in the rear will suddenly move forward. Thus, the movement of the mind in the space of work is endless, as in a labyrinth of transparent walls. In works operating with the impression of space, black is both a colour and a space, and owing to boundary contrast it gives the work light that we see unconsciously. The black field of colour also expressed the boundary at which the space of the work ends with regard to depth. Though the artist does not lead the viewers beyond it, he gives them the opportunity to venture there.
The graphic pattern extending from one end of the painting to the other insinuates that the work is in a space larger than itself. Space is, in fact, markedly conceptual in Hautala's works; it is perceived in our minds, gaining properties that are not included in visual perception. The impression of space created by Hautala is not based on the traditional structure of perspective, reducing space towards a vanishing point. On the contrary, the conception of space applied by Hautala permits the expansion of space in all directions, towards infinity. His works are like condensed "shots" of this continuum, functioning like the mirror through which Alice entered Wonderland. They give access to a larger space with a different logic than on this side of the mirror. Gravity loses meaning, everything can turn upside-down, the front may be at the back, right may be left, just as the viewer wants to move in the space.
A scale of colour based on harmony creates a stable and positive mood. Colour as such, being the domain of emotion for Hautala, is beyond the control of reason, but it is under control in the composition of its places and in the carefully considered arcs and sections of the line motifs, the "means of reason" and its often softened and sometimes even completely hidden lines. They have not been assigned any figurative role, and therefore they gain full weight as independent graphic and rhythmic elements. But a line is always drawn, and thus the viewer will also sense the artist's hand in the works. For Hautala, the making of a work of art, the craftsmanship, is mediation, and the mark of his hand is also evident in the living surface of the planes of colour, underscoring the immaterial nature of colour as the reflection of light. Craftsmanship also brings the work closer to the viewer, almost to touching distance. Hautala's paintings realize Josef Albers's magic formula of 1+1=3, a work of art being more than the sum of its parts, an entity that despite all its controlled elements, lies beyond the complete command of even the artist.
Hautala, "a hardened abstractionist", as he calls himself, is a Finnish representative of the international modernism that began to emerge particularly in Paris in the 1930s and was known at the time as "concrete art". It sought to develop means of expression specific to painting upon the latter's own conditions and terms, freed of the figurative or symbolic tasks of painting. Working along these lines, Hautala maintains many of the ideals of modernism in his art, such as the clarity and economy of expression and the aim of creating art for the sake of art. Hautala explicitly acknowledges the inspiration and guidance that he has received from the masters of modernism, while creating individual art clearly free of the formulas of different schools. He was helped in liberating himself from the formulas of strict Continental European concretism by the works of American abstract expressionists, which showed to him that abstract art could be created in other ways. While international, Hautala is at the same a Finnish artist, whose works exude a Finnish aesthetic in a calm and analysed manner, taking their light from the magical moment of the summer night between daylight and soft dusk. Although the summer nights inevitably turn into the darkness of winter, Hautala's works continue their subtle pulse of light." http://www.anhava.com/