Miikka Vaskola
Buenos Aires

08.02. - 03.03.2013

Buenos Aires? What Buenos Aires?

On this occasion, and in this exhibition, it means both something very general and something extremely specific. Buenos Aires is a starting point, it is a springboard. It is a roster of references and it is a magnet for interpretations. It is whole terrains of images, the capital of a country far away from us, where it is said they dance and with a will, an international powerhouse between the world wars, and an organic centre of contemporary psychoanalysis. It is a myth and it is a reality, a longing for faraway places, and passions, elegance and expected values.

It is also simultaneously the title of a single painting and the title of an entire exhibition.

Miikka Vaskola’s new paintings are a unifying factor for all possible connotations. An integrated exhibition founded on the attraction and interaction of apparent opposites. This is a series of paintings in which both the abstract approach and also figurative painting are intertwined into one. It is a movement that starts off from the abstract and proceeds towards a figurative trace, and it is a movement that carries on from a highly recognizable picture towards abstract levels and spaces.

The message sets off and it finds its recipient. It creates a situation; the experiential nature of painting, which is based on a continual and always changing setting off and returning, coming again and re-departing. This is a movement that creates a space, situations filled with newly opening pathways, intimations. Assumptions and demands, getting onto the skin and under it, a striving. These are shared in-between spaces, with a tacking back and forth, and the creation of a mutual respect between maker and made. A respect that opens up and engenders experiences.

These are paintings that ask only and solely for that one thing: can you look for one more moment, and a little longer – and then come back again. This is the promise: to be close, to come close and to move, to be moved, closer, closer.