Leena-Maiija Rossi interview

Leena-Maiija Rossi: Why do you paint? What kind of possibilities do you think painting has the contemporary art world?

Mari Rantanen: For the past couple of years painting has been somewhere in the background. People have been more interested in other mediums, like photographhy, installations, or other conceptual works. But painting has also become more conceptual works. It is very revealing that artists whose work I have been interested in for a long time, like Elizabeth Murray, David Row, David Reed, and Jonathan Lasker, all have a strong conceptual approach.
So even if painting has been announced to be dead for dozen of times, it keeps coming back in one way or another. In this world where we have so much information, and especially visual information, there has to be room also for paintings. For myself, and I Guess for many other people to, it is very important that somewhere in the middle of all romantic point of view. A “still image” has a certain quality of its own sincee so many images surrounding us are moving: film, television, and videos. I hope that an image that does not escape in an instant can stop the viewers as well.
I love painting as a process, it is always a very exciting and positive experience. I have fun with my paintings; working is easy for me. On the other hand, decision-making is always difficult, but the process itself is very optimistic and interesting. I would not like anybody else to do the job for me.

LMR: What about the possibilities of your own field, abstract art?

MR: When it comes to abstract painting, the situation is interesting in the sense that the eighties made the division between “figurative” and “nonfigurative” completely unnecessary. If you think about artists like Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter, they combine very different elements in their paintings. And suddenly it does not matter if the elements are figurative or nonfigurative. What matters is what we may call the “content.”

LMR: I have known your work only since the mid eighties, when you had already worked for half a decade. Have you always painted abstractions?

MR: Very much so. After I had graduated from the School of art Academy in Helsinki, I painted figuratively for a short while, but I very soon noticed that this was not my way of doing things. Scandinavian concretism has had a deep impact on me and so has American abstract geometric painting; the early minimalist works of Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly have been of great importance to me.

LMR: I recall your paintings from the mid-eighties vividly. I experienced them as clever labyrinths embodied in pulsing colors, visual riddles you offered the viewer to solve. There was also a strong impression that you consciously combined two very different traditions of abstraction; the strictly geometric and the loosely expressive. Were those paintings “postmodern” comments, a way to play with two “pure” phases of modernism?

MR: My early works were very authoritative, almost monumental in their atmosphere. They seldom questioned the modernist project. However, my newer paintings are not ironic either. In that sense I am not a pure-blooded postmodernnist. I feel that my works are optimistic, hopeful and full of positive energy. They may be burlesque because I want them to be critical toward painting and toward society, but irony is not my weapon, In this sense I diverge from a purely descriptive or prescriptive sense of the postmodern.

LMR: So your early paintings were, more or less, homages to artists and traditions you admired?

MR: Yes. My influences were much more visible then than now. Compared to my present paintings, the older ones were almost minimal. They were never minimalistic because I have never been a minimalist, but minimal with their strong, reduced geometry. I’ve always wanted to show the trace of my brush too, so I have included a certain amount of “plastering” or “expressiveness” into the paintings early on. And my colors have always been extremely bright; I’ve wanted to contest the Nordic gray scale.

LMR: You studied in New York in 1982–83 and moved here permanently in 1986. What kind of impact did this have on your work?

MR: It was extremely liberating. When I came here and first saw works by such artists as Ross Bleckner and Gerhard Richter, I said to myself, “Damn, I can do anything!” I learned that an artist can use very different kinds of imagery, that consistent style lacks value in itself. I realized that I wanted to increase my elements, that I wanted to add and to increase my elements, that I wanted to add and not reduce and that I wanted to reevaluate and comment on things. I also started to use organic forms along with geometery. In this sense moving to New York started a baroque phase in my work.
In my present paintings I want to offer the viewer as many diverse options as possible. I do not believe in one right solution in life, one truth, one political system, or one religion. I want to paint deliberately anti-authoritative paintings, where the final solution depends upon the viewer.

LMR: Your recent paintings seem to have more and more connections to language, or rather they resemble encounters of different systems of signs and meanings. Do you feel that your abstract imagery is close to spoken or written language as structure?

MR: Somebody else may see even more theoretical connections between my imagery and language than I do. I am not such a theoretical person. I am very analytical when I work, but theory comes always afterward. I cannot illustrate theory.
Anaway, my paintings are about a larger cultural process. Abstract painting has such a long history of its own and that history includes so many different systems of signs that one can really talk about them as different languages. I operate with those languages. I am interested in combining meanings, not painting styles.
My paintings do have certain narrative qualities Actually, I feel that they resemble film a lot. I paint in layers so that the viewer can experience the history of the painting, all the taping and also the changes and corrections I have made. I work with three panels and that brings one more levels to the work. People can read the panels in whatever order they want, but there is always a linear level of development while the layers operate in space.

LMR: So the whole structure functions like a system where you have coordinates in three dimensions?

MR: Yes, like a space which the viewer can enter, a surrounding space.

LMR: And the way different elements, layers and forms meet each other can be read almost like filmic cutting and editing?

MR: Yes, even so. And the history of the painting comes, once in a while, to the surface as flashbacks.

LMR: Many forms you use are like familiar-looking words, the meanings of which slip constantly from one’s mind when one tries to catch them. How many specific meanings do you think you can load into your symbols? To what extend do you think that people are able to decode your forms and colors?

MR: My paintings include a lot of symbols in a loose way so I do not know if my audience can read everything out of them. For example, for me the colored pattern surfaces represent society while separate figures represent individuals. On the other hand, I use signs that are already clichés, like crosses and grids, but when I do, I try to present them ambiguously, in unexpected and surprising contexts. The combination of familiarity and strangeness is very important.
People interpret things in so many different ways. For example, when I have used a “digital line” as a reference to technology, information, and urban environment, it has constantly been interpreted as an art historical reference to Mondrian. But I never even thought about him when I was painting those forms.

LMR: In some of your paintings you combine very banal elements with very festive ones. One surface resembles a checked tablecloth and another looks like an Islamic mosaic.

MR: I like those kinds of dialogues, they tell a lot about our culture. They reflect different things that exist simultaneously; there is kitchen culture side by side with high culture. Everything is in motion between the kitchen and the glamour.

LMR: It seems that in your works your works you persistently try to redefine the whole nation of decoration, which has traditionally been a preparative one.

MR: My paintings are absolutely decorative! I have been interested in pattern painting as well as in calligraphy for a long time. Nevertheless, I want the patterns to come into being within the working process. I want them to develop in dialogue with other elements of the painting; I never use strict quotations. I may refer to many different directions, from Islamic art to the Renaissance to things I see from my windows on the Bowery, but the forms have to come out from my own practice – sometimes from pure repetition, when I am interested in a certain detail and start to repeat that.
For example, when I use the drippings or “calligraphy” that resemble Jackson Pollock’s gesture painting, I do that deliberately in a very different way. I cut and slice and manipulate the pattern and I look at it from many different angles. I usually try to look at things from diverse perspectives when I am working. I think that it has something to do with this society; when you are a woman you have to do that all the time. Society poses different claims on you and, dependingg on your own needs, you either try to or try not to fulfill them.

LMR: You have sometimes said that it was not until you came to the U.S that you really became a feminist.

MR: Exactly. Earlier the whole issue had no meaning for me. In Finland the position of female artists is very strong. In that society there are almost more female than male artists, and art of women is well presented and appreciated. Here the position of women is so much weaker. It has been very important to experience that difference, to notice that feminism has such a different meaning here than in Scandinavian countries because the societies are built in such a different way. I want women to have a voice of their own and I would like to see the situation where the different point of view of men and women could somehow enrich each other.

LMR: The issues of pleasure and desire seem to play an important role in your paintings and in their titles. They are important concepts also in current feminist discussion. Do you feel that your paintings take part in this discussion? Do you find the concept of abstract feminist painting meaningful?

MR: The language of abstract painting has traditionally been very male oriented, especially here in the United States. As a female painter I try to use that language in a different way. But it does not mean that I would use round forms because they are considered feminine and avoid angular forms as masculine or vertical forms as phallic ones. I’m not interested in painting spirals and ovals or other forms to symbolize female organs. There is already quite a number of paintings that include wombs and certain sexual images connected to femininity. I’m more interested in forms and visual images that tell something about being a woman inside the culture, about women as part of the culture and as creators of culture. For example, decoration and pattern have been ways with which women have given shape to their reality and their environment. And in that sense they are very interesting elements to explore. I do not have feminist theory as my starting point. My staring point is practice and politics of life and how things emerge through that life as different layers.
I think my paintings are sensual. They can even be very sexy. Sexiness is one of many experiences in life and a very visual one. One of my aims is to evoke a feeling of sensuality. That is why the surface of the painting is very important to me , and what kind of materiality it has. They are things that evoke pleasure, they grind and refine the outlook of the painting. I am also fascinated by the indefinable side of pleasure; so many different things can be pleasurable and it is extremely difficult to define them. I am always surprised to see how these things come from my paintings.
There is a very strong sense of desire in the colors and the combinations of colors I use. They are all strong-willed and dominating. If people do have some difficulties with my paintings, it is usually because they do not like the realm of my colors. The colors that I use can feel too “hot” and so forth. And for me nothing can be to hot.

LMR: Where do the colors come from? For me they look as familiar as the neon.lights on the streets…

MR: From everywhere. I remember when I was very young and I was painting my first show that I used a lot of a certain pink that was exactly the same hue as the local supermarket’s plastic bags. In all its banality that specific color fascinated me. Perhaps because everybody else thought it was ugly. Even though my paintings clearly comment on “high culture” and the language of abstract painting. I also pick up things straight from the streets or from popular culture. I deal with issues that either annoy me or please me.
I also want to disturb people with my paintings. It is not first and foremost, but I have always wanted to do paintings that do not behave themselves and that do not please the taste of any establishment.
Because I come from Scandinavia I have struggled all my life with certain aesthetics and a certain sense of beauty and design. As I mentioned earlier, I feel that the world of blue and grey hues is very restrictive and oppressing. The whole notion of the “Northern Light” gives me the creeps. It is very sad that the strong Nordic abstract and geometryc tradition–artists like Mortenson, Baertling, Kujasalo and Nordström–has not received more attention internationally, in spite of the fact that these artists have done very interesting work even before minimalism. That tradition has stayed in the shadow of Munch and his followers.
It is difficult for me to understand how any kind of “Northern Light” could be a relevant source for painting in 1992. It sounds too simplistic. The conflicts inside the society read as conflicts in my art work. In my paintings I have started to draw things more apart, toward the more extreme edges.
If ever thought that my earlier paintings were based on conflict, I can see now that they were well balanced. It has been wonderfully exciting to test my own limits. In a way I build my paintings from inside out. I push the different elements, opposing poles, further and further and make them more and more separate so that they can still carry on a dialog within a certain framework but not be contained within the “frame”.
The reason I feel that painting that comments on society and culture is much more important and meaningful than pure aesthetics is that we are living in an information society and culture. I want to spek about that, and how it feels.

LMR: And in the United States people are living in an extremely problematic society.

MR: In a very problematic information society, indeed. The mechanism of evaluation come from that information, usually in a superficial way. People are given too little time and depth to figure out their philosophies and evaluation. The fact that I want to do paintings with many layers, paintings that refer to many different directions, has to do with being tired of a “disposable” culture. I would like to do paintings with so many levels that people would have to spend more time with them. These paintings would not offer complete solutions.

LMR: I think that especially in your latest works it is very hard to define any kind of center, background, or foreground. They are very “democratic” in that sense. And, interestingly, they seem to connect to the current theoretical discussion of the disappearance of the center and the margins.

MR: There is, at the moment, much rhetoric that revolves around the practice of my work. So perhaps there are stronger possibilities for my paintings to speak out to people now. But I did paintings with that kind of content already in the beginning of the eighties and only afterward I have realized what they dealt with. Sometimes I just catch things from the air without consciously connecting them to any kind of theory. It can be very surprising.
This is not to dismiss thos rhetoric, but the paintings themselves must build up their own visual as well as theoretical and philosophical realm of values. I consider that as their most important task. The viewer is the one who then makes the final decisions on those premises.

LMR: You talk a lot about Scandinavian art and compare that to American art. What kind of impact does living in two cultures have your work?

MR: There is definitely a certain schizophrenic elements because values in those two cultures are partly very different. I was born and raised in Finland, I have lived there thirty years and a very large part of my experiences come from Finnish culture and society. When you come from Scandinavia you come from a well-protected society. And this society is not by any means protected.
Finnish culture is one of very few words. People speak very little and the whole level of expression is scarce. American people speak a lot and they express themselves in many differrent ways. That has had a direct impsct on my paintings. I have felt that I have the right, and even the responsibility, to be “wordy.” But when I first came to New York the use of the English language was very abstract for me bedause I did not have any kind of emotional connection to words. So, while my paintings do have several panels and different kinds of languages in them, it is interesting because it also has something to do with all the other people who live in this culture and speak two languages and live in two different realities. The fragmentary experience that I have in my paintings is very realistic.
In terms of the art world, in Scandinavian countries it is easier to see in what kind of phase we are living because the whole system is smaller and more homogeneous. In New York there are so many worlds on top of each other that it is some times difficult to know what is going on around you. For instance, if you feel that some kind of conservative thinking dominates one edge of the art world, there is always something else as counterweight on the other edge. They refute each other, at least a little.
At the moment I find it very interesting that there is not one “right” way to make art. In the eighties there were so many of them: Neo-Geo, Transavanguardia, Neo-Conceptualism. Now I feel that I have more possibilities to express myself as an individual Perhaps we are going back to a more “primitive” state of thongs, which I find progressive compared to all that ready-packed, ready philosophized stuff we have seen so much of.

LMR: So you still believe in originality and individuality?

MR: Yes, I still believe in originality–not in the modernistic way but in a narrower sense. I try to create an individual handwriting. Individualism and originality in this way is a part of the process of my thinking.
That is actually one of the reasons why I am so interested in Richter’s and Bleckner’s work, in spite of all their diversity, you can always recognize them. They carry along that indefinable presence of their makers. They carry on a history of the language of the sign but use their own grammar in doing it.
That is actually important if you think about abstract painting. there are many painters who just repeat themselves and that gets very boring and tiresome.
It is a real problem for a painter not to slip into the category of things that everyone has seen too many times, but to try to give the paintings an identity of their own. You have to work very hard in order to achieve that, to formulate things in that way, but that’s what I am interested in. I like paintings that challenge me. And I think my works also challenge their viewers. Perhaps I am just not so interested in meditative art, in front which you breathe deeply and flowt a little bit above the ground. I am more interested in the practice of things.

Leena-Maiija Rossi