Black Light – Ari Pelkonen

Imaginary landscapes, a kind of self-portraits, deliberate and unintended, striving towards abstraction, traces, moods, and layering are characteristics that describe my works and reflect my artistic process. Roles, disguise, black, play, night, tension, and ambiguity fascinate me and influence the creation of my works.
In my work, I combine traditional woodcut printing with painting. First, I carve an image onto a wooden plate, which I then print onto thin Japanese paper. I then glue the paper as part of the painting. The print becomes part of the painting, one layer within the layers of paint. I build the images layer by layer, adding and removing, overpainting. My process is like a collage, combining pieces together.
I combine the free and spontaneous marks of painting with the carved, tight lines of woodcut. I take advantage of the qualities of both techniques, which excite and fascinate me, and I consider them important. By comparing or mimicking marks made with different techniques, I try to understand why I perceive them as so similar, why I am attracted to them, and why I have chosen these particular techniques. These techniques are important to me. I enjoy inventing and discovering new ways of constructing images. At times, the techniques themselves play a role in the content of the work.
BLACK LIGHT is an exhibition by Ari Pelkonen, born in Pori (1978), in the upper floor of Galleria Poriginal. The exhibition opens on January 23, 2009. The opening event starts at 18:00. A press conference for the exhibition will take place on the same day at 12:00. Welcome!
The BLACK LIGHT exhibition consists of works created in 2007 and 2008.

This text was created with AI assistance