Series: Fine Stripes – Coded Ornaments

Very thin horizontal lines, running in parallel at regular intervals next to each other, are divided into variably coloured sections of different lengths. Both the length and chromaticity of the segments seemingly change completely at random. Their division into parts is however given by imaginary linear ornaments, which divide the whole surface in several directions. In places where the invisible lines of the ornament intersect the painted horizontal lines, their colour changes. It brings together the complementary or otherwise contrasting colours. The directions of the hidden ornamental lines have a geometric relationship between them. These directions and the actual ornamental lines are articulated freely by hand in contrast to the precisely rendered painting of the horizontals.

In these paintings, I go back to some earlier periods. By using regular horizontal lines, to reduced landscapes with horizontals and to the series “Wallpapers” from the mid-eighties. By using very thin colour lines, to the series “Thin Lines” of the late nineties, and with the composition and chromaticity to the recent series “For Your Eyes Only”.

Silence, concentration, contemplation. These are terms that I recall in memory in connection with the series of paintings “Thin Lines” of the ninety nineties.

The whole year, from my desire for such paintings were created drawings which were again from very thin lines, but which are characterised by a different structure than in the remembered series. These new compositions mostly followed the reduced landscapes and horizontal ornaments from the mid and late eighties. The linear ornaments stretched wide as a landscape and sometimes intertwined. But I was not satisfied, it was too big a return and I missed something new and exciting. And then it happened, the desire for concentration and silence merged with “Twenty One” from 2005 and similar pictures. Suddenly I knew what to do and how.

The silence and concentration was joined by secrecy and a notion of a kind of other composition in the background.

I have always liked the painter Agnes Martin and now I am happy that I was able to turn her visual principles into new paintings, which carry encoded intuited ornaments and at a close proximity they are also radiant. Although reproducing these pictures is difficult and it is against their sense, we are trying to do it.

2008-2009