Art Created by Its Time – Juhani Tarna

In its own way, time becomes evident in structures. People see how townships and cities are built and transformed. Sometimes, when I look at residential areas built in the last few decades, the interiors of apartment buildings, shopping malls, and other structures—with their lattice work, transparent walls, panels, grids, and colorful beams—I see and feel a similarity to some of my own works. No wonder, for I have lived in this time, creating and contributing to its style, even somewhat anticipating it in my paintings and writings. The style of an era is defined by the prevailing, larger context. There is no other art alongside it, whether the work is intimate or urban.

I am pleased that some of my public works have, over time, become more collective in nature—something they were not always. I have seen with my own eyes and through photos in the press how people have gathered in front of my paintings to take pictures. It’s a good thing, one should photograph oneself in front of my paintings with their bright colors—blues, yellows, reds, greens, purples, and oranges. This way, it becomes understood that the works are part of this culture.

I created my first abstract color compositions in 1955 and continued to develop them at art school in Helsinki from the fall of 1956. During my vacation from art school, I began talking about abstract art in Satakunta. I wrote about it in the press and held the first course on it. This is how abstract artistic expression came to Satakunta, something that hadn’t been done here before. This new method had a significant role in the creation and establishment of the Kankaanpää Art School.

THE BIRTH OF LAYERED COLOR STYLE

In 1966, I was commissioned through a competition to create a large public mural for the new school building of the Pori Technical School. I spent the summer painting it in the school’s assembly hall. The work was completed in the fall and unveiled on Pori Day. Later, in a study conducted at the University of Helsinki’s Department of Art History, the work was classified as a large, public, kinetic artwork. This research connected the painting intentionally to art history.

“The things that a person sees behind always represent another level.” Based on this thought, in the 1970s, I began to compose and paint color surfaces in front of and behind each other. No longer side by side as traditionally done. In my work, I sought to achieve large psychological effects. I divided the topmost color surfaces into strips, leaving open gaps between them, as if in sparse boarding. The underlying color surfaces and forms became visible through these gaps. For the uppermost layer, I composed wavy lines. The wavy line is a peculiar “element,” living somehow near the boundary between phenomenon and reality. The layered interplay created an immateriality in the works.

These new works were exhibited in places like Pori in the 1980s, in a solo exhibition at the Ässä Gallery in Helsinki in 1986, and in a retrospective exhibition at the Pori Art Museum in 1988. Tiina Nyrhinen, who was active in Pori at the time, wrote about the exhibition at the art museum: “In Tarna’s works, there is a new airiness and enjoyment of color and movement, such that they truly affect the viewer’s psyche. When the scale and harmony of the colors resonate perfectly, Tarna’s works are irresistible. Fresh colors, intricate yet cohesive, create shivers, sensations of warmth and cold.” (SK 1988)

In this exhibition at Poriginal Gallery, most of the works are from the last three years. The most recent ideas and paintings are long works, inspired by their structure and layering, which I have drawn from a kind of “cultural figure” that emerges and is observed, though always enigmatic.

This text was created with AI assistance