The works in my exhibition deal with decay and disintegration. The starting point of my collage-like paintings have been my observations of nature, such as broken trees, piles of logging waste, and organic growths of rotting fungi and the changes brought about by the passage of time.

My paintings depict various degrees of movement, structural fragmentation of forms and loss of control, without a certain recognizable scale. These changes in the landscape can be seen more broadly as images of aging, fragility and transience – the vulnerability of life – or as a description of social and climate change phenomena.

In painting, I am interested in the use of different materials, tools and unconventional painting methods, which guide the direction of my work while working. Planning and spontaneity are complementary elements in my paintings.

The composition of the paints I use and their physical behavior affect the final result of the paintings, as well as the vague and fading shapes of the traces painted with spray paint, as opposed to the traces left by physical stencils with precise boundaries. In my work process, in addition to adding paint and other material, erasing previously done areas by erasing also plays an essential role. I call this a temporal event where I go backwards in the painting process, as it were. As a result, only the shells and their internal information remain of the previously painted shapes: the body of the shape has disappeared.

The plaster cast sculptures in the exhibition are remnants of my 130 point wall installation in Galleria Heino (2007). The piece was a continuation of my dot paintings of the early 2000s and the search for the perfect dot. When removing the installation from the wall, the symmetrical and minimalistic forms are broken. I use the dots as they are, with all the cracks, imperfections and frays. Time has given them a new task, a change that just has to be accepted. Now they serve as a platform for the growth of different matter.

Samu Raatikainen

Visual artist Samu Raatikainen (born 1971) living in Turku studied at Vapaa Taidekoulu 1991–1994. He completed his M.A. degree at Chelsea College of Art & Design, London in 1997. Raatikainen was chosen Young Artist of the Year 2003 and received the Finnish Art Association’s William Thuring Award in 2009. Raatikainen’s works are in several Finnish public art collections.

The exhibition has been supported by Turku’s Saskiat and Taike. Thanks Luova.fi and Mika Natri.

More Info:
samuraatikainen.com