 |
 |
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
| About the artist |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 Osmo Rauhala is one of the pioneers of the current international movement in Finnish contemporary art. In late 1980īs he moved to New York and made his Master Degree in art over there 1990. Since that he has had over 40 solo-exhibitions including 11 one- man museum shows in Europe , North-and South America. In addition to pursuing an international career in art, Rauhala continues to run his farm in Finland, specialising on organic production. He feels it necessary to carry on the genetic memory he has for the place. His family has lived there for centuries. After working in his studio in New York Rauhala returns to Finland every spring for planting season. Selected articles from magazines: OSMO RAUHALA: EVOLUTION OF THE MIND Osmo Rauhala's exhibition at the Tennispalatsi is an invitation to contemplation beyond the often self-regarding tendencies of the contemporary art world. Rauhala's first recognition in his native Finland came with the Young Artist of the Year award organised by the Tampere Art Museum in 1992 (Finland's equivalent of Beck's Futures). A part-time resident of New York, Rauhala's primary home is in Siuro, in the county of Nokia, Finland, where his family has lived for almost a thousand years and where he runs an organic farm famed for its strawberries. In this bustling, city-centre venue, Rauhala's meditations - on the relationships of nature and culture, chaos and symmetry, and man's ambivalent position at the apex of an animal kingdom, the intuitive, driving intelligence of which is his most powerful computers can't understand - serve as a jarring reboot to the urban vie quotidienne. Rooted in Finnish soil, Rauhala's compelling ethical project embraces profound questions which the global community hubristically disregards at its peril. Joe Hill, Contemporary, issue 65, 2004 NEW YORK, OSMO RAUHALA The dual projection is accompanied by another single projection that, from my viewpoint, constitutes a tour de force and should be shown in a major biennal. The Birth of Evolution (2001) is made through a manipulation of gas particles, clouds, and lightning. Rauhala, who has a background in the biological sciences, is interested in the moment of creation. Like the scientist Jacob Bronowski, he is concerned with discovering that magical moment in time and space - that indelible instant - in which matter turns to life and begins to replicate itself. The color and the changing, shifting liight . so subtle in its variations, yet so purposeful in its intent - offer a presence like a kinetik Rothko. Yet one no longer thinks of the pictoral. One goes into space as an active meditation. Without attempting to lend a mystical interpretation, Rauhala's projection leaves the concept open - open enough to understand it as a miracle of transfiguration, from the viral constituencies of RNA to the more refined elements of DNA. In this sense, the work exists on the perimeter between science and theology, but ultimately within the aesthetics of visualization, of making a manipulation of elements seem palatable as if witnessing the cause of something greater and more sublime than we could ever begin to conceptualize. Robert C. Morgan, Sculpture, December 2002 OSMO RAUHALA AT LANCE FUNG What you saw were multiple, almost kaleidoscopic, versions of the project images - a deer scrambling up a hill, gingerly stepping over a barrier or looking directly at the camera - as they alternately lengthened, shortened, pulled apart or came together. There was something disconcerting to this spectacle, a bit like being inside a hall of mirrors at the amusement park. It was also hypnotically gorgeous. Rauhala is obviously aware of the mythic role that deer have played in Finnish culture as symbols of connection to nature and to nature's power. As you stood surrounded by this slowly mobile pageant of deer on the walls, it seemed that the gallery itself was being inexorable whisked away to the forests of Finland and the primal life therein. The experience was indeed transportive and meditative. Gregory Volk/Art in America/June 1999 OSMO RAUHALA, LANCE FUNG GALLERY The Finnish artist, Osmo Rauhala, is engaged with a kind of mythic search for a reality that is outside the normative structure of our society. His video installation, entitled "The Secrets of the Forest", is a poetic exegesis on the forces of nature confronting those of the simulacra, the commerce encroachments, that threaten extinction to all that does not participate in globalized market economy. In this installation, scrim is hung from the ceiling so as to cut midway between the video projector and the walls, thus adding another illusionistic dimension to the work. There is a sense of a simultaneous world of images moving through time and space. The effect is at once startling and lyrical. The tension between nature, the projection apparatus, the gallery walls, and the scrim suggest a multidimensional atmosphere where, like the deer, the human spectators hover and move and switch directions back and forth. Robert C. Morgan/Critic NY/Vol 13/1, 1999 HOW DOES THE DEER SEE THE WORLD In more recent works, the artist has turned to paintings of storms, of snow, wind and train, in an attempt to give visual form to the sound of turbulence. Turbulence and non-linear thought processes are essential to Chaos Theory, something Rauhala finds of great relevance to his work. Current thinking is beginning to lift the boundaries between art and science. There appears to be possibility of a new signification of what Kandinsky - an artist who, like Rauhala had early training in the science - defined as the "Spiritual in Art" and which his friend Franz Mark hoped to discern in a holistic world through the eyes of an animal. Peter Selz/Critic, Bercley, USA INTRODUCTION Many observers have characterized the postmodern world as a place where nothing remains fixed. Even the languages, their meanings, have been known to change almost without warning. Some contemporary philosophers have defined this condition as a changing state of meaninglessness, a place where the language of the mass-media has emptied the world of all authenticity and meaning. Others have tried proposing different ways in which meaning can still occur in this contingent world. It would seem that in this confusing, seemingly chaotic, visual world a painter has two options; accept that the world in meaningless and rearrange the visual signs in a manner that strikes the viewer as contemporary or, and I think this is the more difficult path, try and extract some meaning out of the world, its visual languages, without becoming nostalgic. Osmo Rauhala is a painter who has chosen the latter course. He has done so by striving to develop a language of signs that would evoke a world he knows well, while, at the same time, not becoming either simplistic or provincial in his intentions. In this regard, Rauhala's use of Finnish myths, its animals and the light and colors of its landscape, recalls Miro's use of the Catalan landscape, its creatures and folklore. Unlike Miro, however, Rauhala doesn't try to transform his disparate sources and images into a unified visual language. John Yau/Critic NY THE SECRET OF THE FOREST As early as the artist can remember, he was surrounded by forests and fields and in fact, rarely left that environment in his formative years. I believe his mother was a major influence on his emotivecreative life. While Osmo was growing up she made up a bedtime story each and every night for many years, each a different tale having to do with the animals that surrounded their farm of trees and oats and barley. This deeply caring woman brought Osmo into worlds that are other than mundane, far away from the harsh climate and surroundings that made up his everyday life. This is a Northern village where for six months a year the sun hardly can be seen and bright colours almost become "amazing" intrusions into the landscape. Animals, deep and contrasting colours, "forest secrets", these start becoming the pattern of young Osmo's expressive vision. Osmo approaches painting in a manner not unlike the way he tries to approach deer in the forest, it is a repetitious process of moving in very slowly and gaining confidence with every step. There are no abrupt gestures, this is a gentle approach. He broadly looks around at the environment to empathize and yet is very focused. This is Osmo's way with art. He has studied and surrounded himself with Rothko, Avery, Nicolas de Stael, Franz Marc, Van Gogh and Jasper Johns and has studied and surrounded himself with deer and rabbits and fox hoping to reveal nature in ways that will help let the viewer unravel the secrets he feels he knows. Karl Katz/The Metropolitan Museum of Art/NY top |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2005 Osmo Rauhala | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
