Pollockesque drips, Japanese ornamentally, Secession style, the digital clicking of video games. Dense structural layers, a hot, greenhouse-hued palette, floating symbols and cartoon-like figures. A geometry of squares and globes, consciously decorative intertwinings, apparently contradictory wholes, sometimes hovering on the verge of chaos.
A Finn living in New York, Mari Rantanen seems to spread before us virtually the whole spectrum of post-War abstract painting, all in one go. She sees the characterstic features of different artist and styles as “languages” or “alphabets”, which can be combined to create new, topical meanings. By working within one sub-area of western culture - abstract art - she demonstrates that this is not at all as homogeneous as we imagine; that it too is made up of many competing cultures, each of which has its own distinctive grammar and frame of reference.
Thus Rantanen rejects purity of genre, and distances herself from art as such. She severs historical and formalistic bonds, and uses paintings as a tool for investigating the intricate relationship between the subject and her/his reality. The stratification in her paintings consists of multiple overwritings.
When Rantanen’s paintings succeed, when she achieves even a momentary equilibrium between all the different elements, the resultant picture exposes that contradictoriness and heterogeneity whose existence is gradually becoming evident to western reality. If these elements can be seen as part of a single culture, then Rantanen’s art also gives rise to the hope of more democratic communication between cultures than exists at present.
Timo Valjakka
SIKSI 3/92 nordic art review
A Finn living in New York, Mari Rantanen seems to spread before us virtually the whole spectrum of post-War abstract painting, all in one go. She sees the characterstic features of different artist and styles as “languages” or “alphabets”, which can be combined to create new, topical meanings. By working within one sub-area of western culture - abstract art - she demonstrates that this is not at all as homogeneous as we imagine; that it too is made up of many competing cultures, each of which has its own distinctive grammar and frame of reference.
Thus Rantanen rejects purity of genre, and distances herself from art as such. She severs historical and formalistic bonds, and uses paintings as a tool for investigating the intricate relationship between the subject and her/his reality. The stratification in her paintings consists of multiple overwritings.
When Rantanen’s paintings succeed, when she achieves even a momentary equilibrium between all the different elements, the resultant picture exposes that contradictoriness and heterogeneity whose existence is gradually becoming evident to western reality. If these elements can be seen as part of a single culture, then Rantanen’s art also gives rise to the hope of more democratic communication between cultures than exists at present.
Timo Valjakka
SIKSI 3/92 nordic art review