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 artist typically takes up a single theme and works on it for an extended period. This time, he found himself exploring a subject that literally invited him to cross the threshold and step inside: doors. 

While in India in 1996, Väisänen painted a water colour sketch of a Rajasthani door with an ornate frame and prayer flags. This year, that sketch caught the artist’s eye and inspired him to begin a new series of paintings exploring doors and gates.

Väisänen explores the interplay of colours, as well as the rectangular shape of doors and their simultaneously abstract and figurative nature. 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. 

Hannu Väisänen is a multidisciplinary artist who works across many fields, incl. visual art, writing, set design, costume design, directing and illustration. His work is held in numerous Finnish public collections, and he has completed many public commissions. 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. 

Galerie Forsblom
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