Anna Retulainen
Whistlejacket

11.01. - 03.02.2013

Anna Retulainen’s exhibition at Helsinki Contemporary divides into two sections. In the gallery space she is displaying a new series of large paintings. At the same time, her drawings that observe everyday life and everyday experiences are on show in the temporary additional space.

The starting points for Retulainen’s paintings are historical: two 18th-century paintings by George Stubbs, Whistlejacket and Lion Attacking a Horse. Both are very particular, specific moments in the history of painting, which Retulainen confronts and uses to get somewhere else – making a break for freedom, the freedom to produce a personal, autonomous painting. In practice what is actualized in the paintings is an observation and a gesture, which develop and advance through repetition, powered by doubt and failure.

“The idea is not to paint a horse, but to make a painting. What is the difference between the two? In the paintings there is a horse, but for me they are physical battles with color. The color spreads and eats up another color, I try to control the life of the colors on the painting ground, and it all comes down to very small movements. The horse is there in the background; it makes the battle possible, and gives me something else to think about.” - Anna Retulainen

The end result is a unique series of paintings that challenge the viewer on multiple fronts: with their size, with their context, and also with the physicality of the marks of the brush. The paintings mirror movement and closeness, and the cycle and echoing impacts of effort, reflection and looking.

In her drawings Retulainen deals with the demands and opportunities of everyday life via the mediation of exquisitely small moments. These moments are situated equally in the heaviest subject of all – in waiting for and facing death – and in momentarily lucid perceptions of everyday objects and the ways that they manifest themselves.

Taken together and as a whole, the interconnectedness of the paintings and the drawings, the power of their opposing elements, gives rise to something beautiful and touching, something very profound and human.