Symmetrical paintings reminiscent of altarpieces, which for Gullichsen are like the church art of the mind’s inner temples, have been the thematic starting point for the creative process of making the exhibition and its narrative. Alongside these, he has made paintings with kinetic effects; wormholes, bending from geometric patterns in rectangular spaces. In addition to these are paintings which in particular are renewing his expression; paintings of dissolving patterns combining geometric patterns and intuitive brush strokes. However, the creative process has not been linear as the various series of paintings have been created in overlapping phases.
After all the disciplined, systematic and scrupulous planning work, Gullichsen says that his artist’s soul yearned for freedom, randomness and surprises to counterbalance the tedious preplanning work. The strict, three-dimensional geometrical patterns with primary colours on a two-dimensional canvas typical of him are now accompanied by expressive brush strokes and mixed colour fields. The uniform patterns become even more transparent as they dissolve into the expressive landscape, where improvisation has taken over.
However, it all stems from the geometrical imagery that he has systematically developed for ten years now. On the one hand it expresses his interest in the aesthetics of modernism and on the other hand his inquiries of awareness and spirituality. With this in mind, the exhibition presents seemingly different, yet in fact, related works in dialogue. Gullichsen’s paintings are all like inner spaces of the mind that can be entered: spaces of sacred light conveying profound serenity, colour infused states of emotion blending into a spatial blur and, like the passages of mind that irresistibly lead to something take the viewer’s thoughts from the secularised world to the spiritual one.
Rauli Heino
