Lived in Space in Color — MARI RANTANEN

The paintings of Mari Rantanen present an invitation. The spaces they invite us into public, semi-public, or private, but they are always formed by vibrating color, they are spaces in color. They are, however, spaces which we cannot enter; we may only imagine moving around inside them. They are frames of mind.

Besides engendering spatial experiences, these paintings pose to you questions concerning painting and painterly qualities. On the one hand you might wonder about the materiality of the color and the illusionary representation, taking place in the two-dimensional plane. On the other hand you might think about the actuality or realness of the illusion. Why should we make a distinction between representation an reality? Paintings may become part of our lived reality in the same manner as the soap opera characters, familiar to us from the daily extreme close-ups on television; or the oboects of desire and identification represented by advertising or film. But this may happen only if these images are meaningful to us, if they make us produce meanings.

“Space is not only a geometrically organized image, or a symbol for the societal order or values of people living in it, like e.g. the philosophers of enlightenment used to think. Space is also part of the societal order, cultural meanings and values.” (Saarikangas 1999.)

Rantanen´s paintings do function as intense grounds for meaning production. The series of paintings from the years 2000-2001 links together two spatial themes: the home and the city. The organizing geometry in the paintings is formed by floor plans of apartments, and subway maps from differnt parts of the world. As is customary in her work, these paintings are divided onto several panels. Where these panels meet, there occurs an encounter of multiple and different patterns, different pictorial languages, different worlds of forms, and different notions of space. These encounters even take place on the surfaces of single panels. The views, which are constructed of multiple layers of bright, often contrasting colors, momentarily affect a dizzying experience of three-dimensionality.

The excitement and fascination created by optical effects is not, however, the only impressive and meaningful aspect in these paintings. When the floor plans, windows, and perspectives overlap and mingle in front of me, I notice that I take several different viewpoints on homes and dwelling. I ponder the home as a lived space in which one moves around and different positions. I think about a variety of different living-arrangements: single people´s homes, couple´s homes, homes of different families or friends. When the surface of the painting is populated by Pokémon Picachus. I think about the differences in kids´ and adults´ ways of inhabiting spaces. I see the home as an environment of consumerism, as a chaos marked by “stuff” – but also as a realm of play and imagination.

Michel de Certau writes about the way texts, spaces and streets transform according to their users:
“This mutation makes the text habitable, like a rented apartment. It transforms another person´s property into a space borroowed for a moment by a transient. Renters make comparable changes in an apartment they furnish with their acts and memories; as do speakers, in the language into which they insert both the messages of their native tongue and, through their accent, through their own “turns of phrase”, etc., their own history; as do pedestrians, in the streets they fill with the forests of their desires and goals. “(de Cereau 1988.)

The windows formed by the lines in the paintings position me as a viewer to the borderline between the private and public, they make me wonder about my own position. Where do I stand? Am I watching out of from outside looking in? The warm orange, yellow and red colors signify cosiness. They also remind me of how nice it is to look at other peoples´windows from the street, imagine lives behind the windows. To be a voyeur of the everyday.

And while I am positioning myself in terms of the windows, the private and the public, I might just as well slide into the other theme of the paintings: into the public city space. To the space which we all experience personally, but also according to certain rules, and even according to the normative constraints set by societal power relations. Rantanen has painted “portraits” of cities with which she has been in a close contact. She has approached these places simultaneously, from the air and from the street perspective. A central part of the “drawing” in the paintings is formed by routes of lines based on subway maps – and in terms of Helsinki, the tramway map. While the paintings represent existing maps or their details in a very concrete manner, they also refer to cultural specificity and locality on a more metaphorical level. And on the other hand they represent codes, which also those who may only be visitors, trespassers or newcomers have to be able to decode, interpret and use. In a way these paintings are thus images of multiculturalism, representations of the everyday negotiations taking place between cultures. Sometimes they might become images of the act of reading strange and incomprehensible signs. They are images of looking for one´s place, or images of dislocatedness.

“They transform the scene, but they cannot be fixed in a certain place by images. If in spite of that an illustration were required, we could mention the fleeting images, yellowish-green and metallic blue calligraphies that howl without raising their voices and emblazon themselves on the subterranean passages of the city, “embroideries” composed of letters and numbers, [–] Shivas made of written characters, dancing graphics whose fleeting apparitions are accompanied by the rumble of subway trains…” (de Certeau 1988.)

The routes are aligned and there are junctions, spots for transfer. Over the subway lines one may identify a schematic representation of a network streets; an unlimited, proliferating crowd of Pokémons; pieces of puzzle; or an endlessly marching parade of windows. No matter how urban a metropolis is – and that is what the starting-points of the paintings, e.g. New York, Tokyo, Mexico City and Berlin are – the city is always also a home for people. The windows remind me of that: of the city, which is a lived space. Every resident makes it her or his own through personal interpretations of buildings, views, routs, smells, noises or silences.

Personal, private interpretations do intersect with common ideas and discourses. Seemingly different cultures may have surprising, and surprisingly many, things in common. Oppositions are not necessarily as abrupt and clear-cut as one might think. These are some of the thoughts I am dealing with when looking at the painting titled The Freedom of Transmission (2001). The painting is divided by a dark, impenetrable-looking zone, under which the subway lines nevertheless are crossing. On the right side, “in the East,” the surface of the painting is organized by layers of regular window rows, and identical circles painted as a dense mass. Representations of forced similarity? Of totalitarian order? On the “Western” side, the Pokémons, those icons of consumerism and capitalism, are heaving – are they not, on the other hand, literally made out of the same mold? The colorful spots signifying “you are here” have been placed onto the zone in between, onto the zone in between, onto no-wo-man’s land; into a space in which one ideally can take conceptual distance to both systems.

“Power has its space and space has power. Spatial organizations and practices are gendered and gendering, in many ways. Our gendered and situated identity is formed in space and in the use of space. “Saarikangas 199.)

Rantanen’s paintings have potential to act as metaphoric representations of both macro- and micro-leveled power relations. Even though the paintings do not represent gendered human figures, one can still very well wonder at the gendering effects engendered by images and spaces alike. The apartment floor plans represent spaces, which get gendered in the use of the residents. The routes in the city form places and spaces of fear and pleasure, depending on the varying perspectives of the wanderers; according to their gender, age, ethnicity, class, sexuality and able-bodiedness. Somebody is afraid in the quiet streets of the nightly Helsinki, Someone else merges into the crowd and enjoys her or his place in a metropolitan subway train.

Also the unabashed, excessive use of the decorative, which runs throughout Rantanen’s artistic production, refers to her consciousness of the differing positions of the genders in the history of Western art. And to her consciousness of different meanings connected to artwork realized by men and women.

Especial the neo-classic notions of art gave the decoration a marginal, feminine and pejorative meaning. Gender differences were reflected also in the modernist ideas in which the ornament and the detail weree abusive terms. Paul Valéry has stated: “The more abstract art becomes, the less there are women who have made a name for themselves as artist.”

Many agents of contemporary art world still use the term “decorative” in a belittling way: “It remains somehow decorative… it is only decoration… it is to decorative…” Rantanen’s paintings issue a consistent challenge to the disregard of ornament, deeply seated in art discorses and practices. Ornament is not a crime in these paintings; it is a means of pleasure and a meaningful choice in terms of the content of the works. The genealogy of the patterns and figures may be traced back to everyday phenomena traditionally connected to women: interior decoration, textiles, and public transportation. In the social role of a women artist Rantanen carries on a politically aware conversation with the male-dominated history of the Western painting, especially with the tradition of modernism. Of course she is not alone in her project; she has gained a lot of support from the postmodern crisis of authorities in general, and from feminist thinking in particular. Feminist artist have already since the 1970s re-launched and legitimized “womanly” techniques and “feminine” themes like the decorative in art. Rantanen’s work is clearly part of this continuum. The series representing homes and cities might be interpreted also through the metaphor represented by the feminist researcher Marina Warner. When dealing with the possibilities of female audiences as producers of meaning she has drawn a parallel between women an squatters, “brave but vulnerable usurpers of space”.

These paintings thus connect with feminist culture of woman, and through the theme of decorative they probably come very close to the bodily ways of performing femaleness. After all, in the heterosexual gender system it is allowed for, and strongly expected from women that we decorate ourselves. But it is crucial to emphasize that these paintings are very culturally conscious work of art, and the femininity possibly connected to them does not by any means emerge into them “naturally” because of the gender of the painter. We may just as well talk about the masculinity signified by these paintings: about their boldness, their way of taking their space, their active mode of being. From my point of view Rantanen breaks the traditionally assumed essential ties between women and nature. To me her works appear to be tightly connected to, even only made possible by language and the concept of the image – they seem to be thoroughly constructed in and by culture. The multi-layerdness of her working process and the complexity of the painted structure emphatically speak for the “unnaturalness” of the paintings.
The private becomes public and vice versa. Femininity and masculinity are both to be found from a female painter’s work. Dichotomies loose their self-evidence. Rantanen’s paintings also help me to problematize the traditional subject/object relationship between the artist and the viewer of her or his art. The viewer is asked to join the game as a productive agent, as a co-author who may create her/his own “reading order” or “schedule” in terms of looking. There is no definite center-point in the paintings, one can read them from right to left or vice versa. The viewer is welcome to develop one’s own storyline and imaginary routes. The field of painting, the field of action and agency, the field of tension is in many ways an open field. The structure prevents strict oppositions from taking place and promotes a multilogue of many voices, or many simultaneous dialogues.
This means that you may have to take into account many things simultaneously. On the painted surfaces co-exist and overlap diverse visual references to both popular and “high” culture, references to both history and the present. They meet in fruitful conflicts, which do not have to be solved violently; you can find many different solutions to them. In the same manner as the painter switches from one visal language into another accordiong to what she wants to express, and does not make any claims about her “true identity” or established style, the viewer is also able to move around – to be a transient who makes the space in color habitable for her own ideas.

– Leena-Maija Rossi