Pilvi Kalhama: What Is Important? Jukka Rusanen's Painting as a Demonstration of Today
Art researcher and director of EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art Pilvi Kalhama writes about Jukka Rusanen’s painting.
Artist Jukka Rusanen has always addressed the essence of painting in his work. In his latest body of work, he delves even deeper into questions concerning painting. As viewers, we naturally have certain preconceptions about what constitutes the characteristics of a painting. Rusanen stretches these notions in various ways: as expanding painting spatially or utilizing it as a kind of performative tool. In some of his works, he fully liberates the form of painting. Then we might encounter a painted canvas worked as an installation or like a sculpture, as if abandoned to the space. However in fact, the details are meticulously considered and should be interpreted as meaningful gestures — like brushstrokes.
In the pair of works, such as Surface and Target, Rusanen examines the dialogue between canvas and sculpture. The components are large in relation to the viewer, but equally significant to each other. In front of the painting on the wall there is a doll figure draped with woven linen. It is slightly taller than an average human being and we are left to imagine what lies beneath the fabric. The estranged figure conveys a sense of religiosity, suggesting something daunting, beyond the human. The old classical religious paintings and sculptures undoubtedly aimed to evoke a similar feeling in their contemporary viewers: a sense of human insignificance, divine grandeur, and the weightiness of artistic narrative. Through estrangement, Rusanen’s viewer becomes an observer, yet the viewer of today is simultaneously more vigilant in questioning the presented arrangement and narrative. The large scale, composition, and its classical nature both elevate and estrange. One starts to pay attention behind the work itself: to history, techniques, the artist's intention and visual references.
The Journey to the Perfect Painting
In his search for the essence of a painting, Rusanen seems to have recently set himself an increasingly demanding task: he repeatedly returns to consider the core of painting in its most difficult form – on the surface of a traditional, familiar canvas around a stretcher bar frame where its essence has been sought for centuries. The question arises whether the great masters of painting can be defeated. Every new painting by Jukka Rusanen is a comment within the history of painting, and the understanding of the works cannot be separated from this network of references, relationships and mutual conversations between the works. An individual painting is always the sum of many parts and stories placed in history. As Rusanen loosens his hold on the work after it is completed and when it ends up interacting with the spectator, the story of the work continues in the ancient narrative of painting.
Sometimes Rusanen shows the formal and historical references of his work very shamelessly and unconcealed. He reminds that a painting can be realized by following, for example, a traditional genre such as a still life. Anyone, even a Sunday painter, recognizes the still life as the starting point. Rusanen's installation Sunday Painting is in particular a work that builds meaning for the viewer through its presentation. We notice that once again the essence of the painting is somewhere else than in the picture itself.
In his journey of painting, Rusanen often returns to the genres of painting, such as still life or portrait. One particular painting has become an important archetype to the artist over the years: "I always return to this one specific painting, Da Vinci's Virgin of the Rocks. The reason is its perfect composition," he says. Da Vinci's work is a kind of hybrid of a portrait and a still life. There are actually two original Virgin of the Rock works (in Italian, Vergine delle rocce), too. In Rusanen's case, painting is basically always a “copy” – a new reproduction – of all previous paintings.
By returning to that archetypal work, Jukka Rusanen is in a way searching for the perfection of the painting. What the search reveals, however, is a certain sprain. Perhaps perfection cannot be achieved, or it no longer exists in our world time. In a perfect painting and a perfect world, we could stop searching. The illusion of a perfect painting could create the feeling that the world is still. Right now, we desperately need this feeling. However, the truth is only a journey towards it. We don't have a final result (and therefore not a complete painting), but only unfinished points along the way. In this way of thinking, a painting is an interpretation of the moment when it is made, when it is placed for reception, when it is looked at, when it is interpreted or written about...
Just as the figure in the work Target is covered, the image in the painting may also eventually have to be completely covered. Why? Because one has to leave room for ideas, interpretation, imagination and free thought. In our minds only, we can stop and hold the world in place if we want to. In the work Lost Images, Rusanen has covered the image area with a linen fabric. He shows us only small areas of the surface and edges of the painting. The complete image of the painting must be imagined.
The Meaning of the Painting
In Rusanen's art, two extremes are highlighted: the work of the mind and the work done by hand. "Making with my hands has changed my whole idea of painting," he says. Of course, the art of painting in its most classical form is done by hand, but in Rusanen's case, a new dimension has come by immersing himself in the core of the canvas in the most tangible way: learning and working on the art of traditional linen weaving. When Rusanen weaves dozens of meters of linen fabric for his paintings in his studio with two looms, purposefully, monotonously and routinely, he is as deep as he can be at the heart of the painting process and working. The artist has taken on a huge task. Done this way, it takes an endless number of hours, days and months to make a painting. The passing of time, making and the slow working of the material become part of the deepest core of the painting. At the same time, this changes our understanding of the meaning of the image in Rusanen's painting, as the search for the perfect image and composition of the painting takes on a completely new form. More important than the image is the awareness of the path of making the work. More important than the image is the linen itself, the material and physicality of the work. As a sustainable natural material, linen returns the work to everyday life, to this moment.
Rusanen makes us ask where we need a painting and what is its function. Is painting an all-important cultural sign for us, a prestiged object, a trace of a person in the world, a reflector of our thoughts, a cultivator, or what is it? In my thoughts, I find myself wishing it wouldn't just be a new picture among others, a new illustrated item among others.
Today, stuff is overflowing and it often feels that people have somehow lost their soul to its immensity. "Painting is an enigma, but you can't give it too much power", says the artist and continues: "an artist should have a soul". It's as if he himself, as creator, is having some sort of struggle with his painting for the painting to have a meaning, and for the artistry to have meaning. As a spectator of art, I experience the same struggle, just as a person living in our current time. But when we look at Rusanen's new works and actually his entire body of work, we notice how much painting can do. There is no single truth. That's why I am relieved to notice that when I look at his art and when I encounter it, it makes me question what is important. Thus, Rusanen's Painting highlights perhaps one of the most important questions of our time.
Pilvi Kalhama is an art researcher and director of EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art.
All Jukka Rusanen's works mentioned in the essay are from 2024.