Reima Nevalainen: The Years Between Night And Day
Reima Nevalainen鈥檚 intense paintings portray people, nature and the dynamic tension between the two. The Years Between Night and Day refers to contrasts in time鈥檚 cycle and the unrelenting, slowly evolving approach to the artist鈥檚 process. Nevalainen alternates between painting dark and light canvases. The dark-light contrasts do not depict light and shadow so much as background: they constitute their own self-contained reality with its own set of laws. Although he does not work at night, the artist sees the nocturnal hours as a time of ripening: after he finishes his day鈥檚 painting, his canvases continue evolving 鈥� the paint slowly dries and the traces of the brush become permanently etched on the surface like the cementation of the earth鈥檚 sediments.
Nevalainen employs a collage technique to achieve a layering effect, combining sheets of paper, sand, and scratched shreds of canvas. In his latest works, his style of painting verges closer than ever on drawing. Whereas he previously embraced a powerful sense of materiality, he now favors line and the repetition of simple forms. Surface becomes line, and line becomes an abstract system of signs and indices. His art has an organic quality and a strong resonance with nature that evokes the Japanese aesthetic concept of beauty expressing itself as imperfections.
Reima Nevalainen鈥檚 intense paintings portray people, nature and the dynamic tension between the two. The Years Between Night and Day refers to contrasts in time鈥檚 cycle and the unrelenting, slowly evolving approach to the artist鈥檚 process. Nevalainen alternates between painting dark and light canvases. The dark-light contrasts do not depict light and shadow so much as background: they constitute their own self-contained reality with its own set of laws. Although he does not work at night, the artist sees the nocturnal hours as a time of ripening: after he finishes his day鈥檚 painting, his canvases continue evolving 鈥� the paint slowly dries and the traces of the brush become permanently etched on the surface like the cementation of the earth鈥檚 sediments.
Nevalainen employs a collage technique to achieve a layering effect, combining sheets of paper, sand, and scratched shreds of canvas. In his latest works, his style of painting verges closer than ever on drawing. Whereas he previously embraced a powerful sense of materiality, he now favors line and the repetition of simple forms. Surface becomes line, and line becomes an abstract system of signs and indices. His art has an organic quality and a strong resonance with nature that evokes the Japanese aesthetic concept of beauty expressing itself as imperfections.
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