Hannu Väisänen: Derrière les portes

Hannu Väisänen’s works often deal with everyday objects and occurrences, translating their intriguing details and distinctive features into the language of painting. The subjects he chooses may include anything from crockery to rugs, but might just as easily be historical figures or existing works of art. The artist typically takes up a single theme and works on it for an extended period – lingering, delving deeper, exploring it through a series of works, and incorporating a shifting range of colours, shapes and textures. This time, he found himself exploring a subject that literally invited him to cross the threshold and step inside: doors. The exhibition also serves as a celebration of the artist’s 75th birthday.

While in India in 1996, Väisänen painted a watercolour sketch of a Rajasthani door with an ornate frame and prayer flags. During an exceptionally hot summer in France this year, that sketch caught the artist’s eye, reminding him of the intense heat of India and the way the colours glowed in the hot sun. The experience inspired him to begin a new series of paintings exploring doors and gates.

In his door series, Väisänen explores the interplay of colours, as well as the rectangular shape of doors and their simultaneously abstract and figurative nature, combining geometry with freely flowing, organic forms. Although the subject matter is figurative, the artist avoids creating any illusion of depth, instead allowing the paintings to exist purely on the surface of the picture plane. His doors can be either closed or ajar, floating in a spaceless space like alluring, mystical barricades. 

Hannu Väisänen (b. 1951) is a multidisciplinary artist who works across many fields, including visual art, writing, set design, costume design, directing and illustration. His work is held in numerous Finnish public collections, and he has completed public commissions for clients including the Finnish National Opera, Kontula Church, and Oulu Cathedral. He was awarded the State Prize for Art and the Finlandia Prize for Literature in 2007, as well as the State Prize for Literature in 2015. Väisänen lives and works in south-western France.

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