Janne Räisänen Artwork / Kunst / pori

Janne Räisänen Ausstellung

Heurigen, Katervideos und die Biene Maja Artist in Residence Vienna 2016

Janne Räisänen präsentiert im Rahmen des Artist in Residence-Programms der KRINZINGER PROJEKTE in einer Solo Show neue Arbeiten, die während seines Wien-Aufenthalts von April bis Juni 2016 entstanden sind.

Es ist ein Universum voller grotesker, wilder und verspielter Charaktere, in das uns Janne Räisänen angefangen bei kleinen Zeichnungen bis hin zu großformatigen Malereien eintauchen lässt. Es ist ein intuitives Werk, das sich bei aller subjektiver Kraft auf mannigfaltige Referenzen bezieht: die nordischen, mythologischen Erzähltraditionen, Einflüsse der Art Brut, Kinderzeichnungen und Höhlenmalereien sind ebenso zu finden, wie popkulturelle Zitate aus der Techno- und Gay-Szene. Diese geben seinen Arbeiten eine gewollt trashige Attitüde. Weiter finden sich Anknüpfungspunkte an die jüngere nordische und deutsche Malereigeschichte (Luostarinen, Baselitz, Kippenberger,...), aber auch Tillmanns lässt sich darin finden.

Die meist unterbewusst entstandenen Arrangements lassen eine Vorliebe für schwarzen Humor und TV-Serien erkennen. Ideen dazu entstehen bereits während der Grundierung der Leinwände. Die Struktur des Materials gibt, so Räisänen, die Gestaltung vor. Wie auf Befehl entstehen so irrwitzigen Flächen und erotisch laszive, manchmal deformiert zu deutende Figuren. Es ist eine Vision, die am Anfang dieses Schaffensprozesses steht. Die Fertigstellung eines Werkes kann dann einen Tag oder auch ein Jahr dauern. Eine Figur kommt dazu, transformiert sich. Jede Schicht eröffnet neue Perspektiven, die Schwierigkeit dabei ist zu erkennen, wann ein Bild vollendet ist, denn die Figuren stehen in keinem narrativen Verhältnis, es sind lose Relationen, ohne vorrangige Komposition und Symbolik. In seinen neuen Arbeiten bestimmen große monochrome Farbflächen und Leerstellen das Gesamtbild. Die Arbeit an einem Werk begreift der finnische Künstler als Kampf, jedoch als einen, den er gerne bestreitet. Seine Bilder sind für ihn physikalische Objekte, sie zu produzieren bedeutet die Auseinandersetzung mit unterschiedlichen Materialien.

Janne Räisänen benutzt Wasserfarben und Öl, Wachskreiden, Buntstifte und Tinte. Der Prozess der Farbwahl startet ganz behutsam, um diese dann stellenweise mit Öl zu verdichten. Die Transformation seiner Werke hängt in erster Linie von dem Material selbst ab – ob Papier oder Leinwand.

Archetypes & Antiheroes

by Max Henry2016

The paintings of Janne Räisänen defy easy categorization. Visceral as a cave painting their fluid lines of graphite and edgy pencil marks underscore subtle stains and shocks of pinpoint color. An initial corre- spondence with Art Brut or Primitivism gives way to something else. To describe them merely as faux naïf would be wrong. This is an artist who is very much engaged by contemporary life with all of its emotion- al baggage, hopes, dreams, and illusions. For his 2016 residency at Krinzinger Projekte, Räisänen spent several intense weeks in Vienna holed up in the studio. Here the results of a restless mind at work are apparent and is in many respects a diary encapsulating his experienc- es in the old Roman city. Taking advantage of the ample sized working space (in comparison to a smaller Berlin studio) he’s produced his larg- est works to date. Drawing and painting enable each other; intimate untitled small-scale drawings begin the process to free the mind and in turn the hand to improvise paintings on the fly. In various sized formats Räisänen reveals a distinct style that is as spontaneous and raw as Jean Michel Basquiat, early André Butzer and A.R. Penck, or for that matter outsider art that has finally entered the critical discussion about influences on contemporary painting.

Loose translations of his Finnish titles correlate to a perverse sense of humor that includes caricatured portraits with anti-establishment sentiments, revolutionary sympathies, and numerous high/low cultural touchstones. Hip-hop and metal music provide entry points into narra- tives of bizarre scenarios, absurdist dramas play out throughout. On unprimed canvas “Africa Bambaata” shows three disproportionate fig- ures around a patch of color; one seems to sway in dance. The protag- onist of said title refers to pioneer American DJ Afrika Bambaataa, who is reverentially known as the Godfather of hip-hop for his merging of electro beats with rap. Hilarious and madcap “Simon Bolivar ́s First trip to Bolivia” surreally imagines the Venezuelan patriot and statesman. Encountering a man on a raft and an adversary with a distorted face who wears a cerulean hued dunce cap, the cap is unto itself a moun- tain island, a single tree at its apex with a crude face scrawled into its side. A pregnant one-eyed cat procured out of smudgy violet stains and brush marks imply the bad luck of the proverbial black cat passing by. Bolivar’s painted head with its graphite Captain’s hat sits atop another simplistic head with a single curved line delineating the body. Faces within faces or limbs growing out of and into other attenuate limbs ap- pear, it’s not a solidly physical realm here. Recurring leitmotifs include human figures interspersed with unexpected objects such as a piano, and hybrid animals engaging in a terrestrial adventure. These benign outcasts dot the barren landscape; birds, horses, unicorns, pigs, am- phibious creatures, and human limbs morph into or out of plant or ani- mal forms. Just when it seems pessimistically bleak, a little green oasis intermittently appears in one picture or another.

As an offering from the psyche of this tuned in artist the subject mat- ter leaves its clue in the title of each painting yet remains open to inter- pretation. On various levels every one of them has this uncanny some- thingness about them, personally conjured from a waking dream. The rudimentary appearance of the forms is deliberate. According to the dictates of individual temperament the beauty in such painting is that child-like crudeness in the right hands often turns into a virtue. Look- ing at precedence in late Picasso or the minimal, slightly dirty grease pencil markings of Joe Bradley its clear that Räisänen too, is cut from his own stylistic cloth. In other words he can’t help himself. Acting on his own terms and impulse he conjures an unseen realm just ticking beneath the surface of our signifiers.

In the act of transcribing his humor and pathos into mytho-biograph- ical painting, all sense of comfortable bourgeois taste and propriety is upended. Friendlier than Goya’s depiction of monsters lurking, Räisänen none-the-less startles ones visual syntax with his transgression of all sense of normalcy. His subject matter very much resonates in the era of Internet personas, Cos-play, and gender benders. Yet that’s the construct of 2016, socially engineered loose morals where the new normality degrades us with broken taboos.

Like the themes found in Ovid’s Metamorphosis it’s both a person- al diary and a chronicle of the contemporary flux seeking redemption from suffering. For at present the cultural landscape (aided and abet- ted through technology) devours the visible world as grist in a simulta- neous consumption of past/present/past imagery. Over stimulated by image fatigue those first introduced to these idiosyncratic pictures of Janne Räisänen arrive at a primordial state. The chatter subsides as the narrative connections emerge, they’re lucid free form dreams with fabulist connotations. Instinctively using Surrealism’s double image he taps into the shifting relation of the mind to the world. Spectral presenc- es are everywhere, bygone myths from the broken chain of events in the cracks of history.

With much of the present day art production technologically deper- sonalized and scientific, the visible affects of Räisänen’s paintings can be felt. They’re a psychological tug-of-war between the hum of the void and the incessant stimulus of the present.

Archaic painting is a rabbit hole he invites you to enter. Perhaps in that unquantifiable space you might perceive that beyond the murky shadows and the surface of ap- pearances lies the bright spark of human life.

JANNE RÄISÄNEN

geboren/ born 1971 in Pudasjärvi

lebt und arbeitet / lives and works in Berlin

Ausbildung / Studies

1996 Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, Exchange program 1992-1998 Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki

1991-1992 Liminka School of Art, Finland

Einzelausstellungen / Solo Exhibitions

2019 Pelle Hermanni von Hermannplatz, Schwarz Contemporary, Berlin

2018 XANADU - Hän ottaa maailman avosylin vastaan, Helsinki Contemporary, Helsinki 2017 Janne Räisänen, Die Sonne Hat Doch Geschienen, Schwarz Contemporary, Berlin 2016 Heurigen, Katervideos und die Biene Maja, Krinzinger Projekte, Wien.

Käy peremmälle. Ota vaatteet pois, Helsinki Contemporary, Helsinki 2015 JaNoir - TechNoir, SCHWARZ CONTEMPORARY, Berlin.

Janne Räisänen, kuratiert von / curated by Ritva Röminger-Czako & Wolfgang Schwarzkopf, Kunstverein Galerie am Markt, Schwäbisch Hall

Out of the Box, Kunsti Museum of Modern Art, Vaasa

2014 Kunst im Club, Union International Club, Frankfurt am Main

2013 Wirst du immer mein sein, Musterzimmer, Berlin

2012 Salattu ovi lumottuun puutarhaan - vielä on toivoa, Galerie Anhava, Helsinki Salon Dahlmann präsentiert Janne RÄISÄNEN, Marburger 3, Berlin Hinterwinter, Galerie Suvi Lehtinen, Berlin

2011 Dirty Something, Something Dirty, Wonderloch Kellerland, Los Angeles It’s All Old Bollocks, mit / with Samppa Törmälehto, GalerieZ, Stuttgart

2010 Ilonan katupoika, Galerie Anhava, Helsinki Immaculate Shittendo, Kolonie Wedding, Berlin

2009 Superphosphatenfabrik, Anne Kaminsky und Janne RÄISÄNEN, SAMSA, Berlin Elements, Retulainen, RÄISÄNEN, Taidesalonki Husa, Tampere,

2008 I Enjoy My Minimal, Galerie Anhava, Helsinki

2007 Psyche? der Stadt, KFA Galerie, Berlin The Day After Yesterday, Turku Art Museum, Finland

2005 Janne  Museum, mit / with Juha-Heikki Tihinen, Juhana Heikonen, Kluuvi Gallerie, Helsinki heilvangoghundleingolub, Taidesalonki Husa, Tampere

2004 Right Said Frank Party, Galerie Frank, Paris

2003 Welcome to My Head, Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki Warum ich bin Jonathan Meese und die Andere nicht?, Menchenraum 2, Berlin The Great Cornholio, Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

2002 Artsportz, Gallerie Kari Kenetti, Helsinki Kekarainen vs. Janne RÄISÄNEN, Oulu Art Museum, Finland