Hannaleena Heiska
All Those Moments Will Be Lost In Time, Like Tears In Rain

08.03. - 07.04.2013

The title of Hannaleena Heiska’s painting exhibition both describes its contents and puts it in context. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain is a direct quotation from the android Roy Batty’s powerful monologue near the end of the film Blade Runner, the moment before he dies. According to one account, the actor Rutger Hauer improvised the scene.

At the same time, the title and this new series of works put us into a certain state of mind, a melancholy, but not one that is without hope. This is painting that is singular in its experience world. It is created and carried out using colours and the painterly gesture, which tears and shreds, but which also nurtures and invites us in, to stay there, one-on-one with the paintings, looking and testing out the interaction. Lightly and teasingly, profoundly and seriously.

The exhibition as a whole is linked with the Carte Blanche video screening, selected by Hannaleena Heiska, at the Andorra cinema in Helsinki, which will show a series of contemporary videos under cinema conditions. The video screening will both display another side of Heiska’s works and bring together more rarely seen works by filmmakers who are important to her.

About 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water. Every day, 1420 cubic kilometres of water evaporates into the atmosphere from the surface of the land and the seas. The same amount also comes back every day.

“My paintings are signs of lost moments, just as, years later, a record that you have listened to a lot in the past can frighteningly accurately bring back to mind a certain moment or mood, even a smell.”

“After my father died in autumn 2011, I began to be afraid of dying. I panicked, waking up in the middle of the night thinking about how I would cease to exist.”

“In the end, I began painting pictures, and painting them kept the sorrow at bay for a while. I was inspired by the world of my favourite film and I painted versions of the characters I love. Of the constantly weeping replicant Rachael, who believed she was human. Of the replicant Roy Batty, who, aware of his own imminent death, comes down to earth to look for his creator, to demand more time alive. Of the animal replicants and of the sad, neon-lit cities in their endless rain.”

“I also painted portraits of animal heroes, of apes and monkeys that were sent into space. Of brave little creatures travelling towards some unknown destination. Of the ones who, having landed back on earth alive from beyond the firmament, were given a real name instead of a serial number. No.65 a.k.a. Chop Chop Chang a.k.a. Ham. Able. Sam. Yorick a.k.a. Albert VI.”

An adult human being is about 70-75% water. Old people are around 10% less. A new-born baby is more than 90% water. The human brain is 75% water. Human bones are a good fifth water.

“I painted quick, ethereal portraits all at one sitting. It is important to keep the working process fresh and open, to practise coordination of hand and mind. I want brushwork that looks effortless and easy. That is difficult. Even though my starting point is often an existing picture, ultimately everything still always comes down to the painting. And even if, one day, I might perhaps want to make a Rachael that looks like Rachael, at some stage, I throw out the original picture and let the painting take me absolutely wherever it takes me. Into the unknown.”

“Everything always comes down to the idea of the painting. To the abstract idea that I bring out by painting. If I could say it in words, I wouldn’t paint it. I can’t say precisely how I know when a painting is finished. I just know that, in a period of intense work, I have forgotten myself, and then there comes a moment when I recognize that the painting is finished. It is finished when there is no need to take anything out or to add anything to it. Everything is just as it is supposed to be.”

A snowflake is made up of billions of molecules that are arranged in a certain shape. But it is impossible to find two snowflakes that are alike. If a snowflake melts and refreezes under the same conditions, it returns to exactly the same shape. It remembers its previous configuration and goes back to it.

The quotations are from Hannaleena Heiska’s exhibition diary. The bits in bold text are, in turn and in their own way, facts, background information to the exhibition.