PÄIVI TAKALA - "MEMENTO"
10 September - 22 October 2011 | Bourouina Gallery
Bourouina Gallery is pleased present news works by finnish artist Päivi Takala in dialogue with sculpural interventions by Berlin based artist David Kroell.
In her most recent works, Päivi Takala reflects upon decay, disappearance and absence, themes which also guide David Kroell's considerations when creating his spatial interventions.
Päivi Takala's most recent series Vanitas proposes a contemporary version of the tradition of genre painting. A reminiscence of the ephemeral appears not only in the choice of motifs but also in the working process: after having roughly designed a picture using mask tape to form its contours, she leaves it aside until the glue dries out. When the tape detaches, the composition exfoliates from the canvas. She captures this decomposition in a final painting upon a second canvas. The result is a figurative and photorealistic painting that is yet undeniably abstract.
David Kroell's subtle installation pieces force the viewers to sharpen their senses of sight: almost invisible, the pieces seem to hide from the beholder. Kroell manipulates architectonical details within the exhibition space. He forms rooms in the way that others might mould mounds of clay, and this in a quiet and unostentatious manner: newly painted walls peel off as though decrepit, tiny details occur out of place, and non-existing elements leave traces. As in the work of Päivi Takala, time and the idea of „letting things happen” both play an important role. The consideration of art as a process brings an element of performance into Kroell's work.
A distant and poetic aura marks the works of both artists - as does a manifestation of simultaneous presence and absence. Their works develop a statement about what art could be: the shadow of an idea. They lay down tracks and send the viewer searching.
PÄIVI TAKALA – "WINDOW SEAT"
27 March – 28 April 2009 | Bourouina Gallery
Figurines, Disturbances
What happens when we look at these paintings? First of all, we seem to perceive something recognizable before our eyes: sometimes a man, let us say by a door or, a window, then a man outside in a space behind an open window. Or some other figures that we assume to know something about.
Quite often the figures are somewhere between the spaces: going in somewhere or out, being in between. We could say that this leads to an impression that the figures in the paintings are not exactly anywhere. Or are they?
If we first pay attention to the figurality of the paintings, that is, the recognizable figures in the spaces of the paintings,
then, immediately, we also realize the presence of certain visual elements that produce an atmosphere of abstraction in the paintings. The figurality has been situated in the space in a way that prevents the reading of the painting as simply representing something familiar to us, or, as we might say, something "normal" in the world.
So, we are moving into two opposite directions in front of these paintings. The figurality seems to invite us for interpretation: we have a strong feeling that we cannot resist "making sense," producing discoursive meanings. We may even be tempted to read certain paintings as a series of meaningfully connected images. In other words, it may be irresistible to arrange certain images in a series that will be taken as a story. We ask: what is going on? what has happened? what will take place? At the same time Pave Takala's paintings force us to realize that making sense is not exactly the point in question. There is always something in the paintings that disturbs the reality and makes the identification with the figures impossible.
We become, sublimely, aware of the limits that we have, as spectators of these paintings.
(Dr. Veli-Matti Saarinen)
"WHAT'S UP 2009" - PÄIVI TAKALA
14 June – 2 August 2008 | Bourouina Gallery
The subjects of Päivi Takala's paintings are in refusal.
The depicted forms are covered with cloth; the face of the hooded person with back turned cannot be seen, or a further view of the landscape is prevented by an overgrown thicket. The paintings are limited in information. The subjects are simplified and composed plainly in the middle of the picture. There fore, the paintings have a mood of undisturbed presence and expectation. The individual paintings are like stills from films waiting for the next action to take place.
The thematic of denial in the works makes the whole melancholy and absent. Denial can be seen protecting oneself against the events of the surroundings or as indifference towards them. However, the gentle painterly treatment of the theme makes the works empathetic and understanding.
Emptiness and an expectant mood make the thematic content of the paintings sensitively changing. Another painting placed next to a canvas alters the content of an individual work. The visual narrative between the works makes the mounting of the exhibition a specifically important and delicately transforming element.
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